By the Sword
by Kirika-sama
Summary: Hunted for the slaying of humans and for desertion in the name of a young girl, Teresa of the Faint Smile, greatest Claymore of all, faces off against her most powerful opponent: the second strongest Claymore in demon form.
1. Her Reason

Her Reason - By Kirika

* * *

A Claymore fic. Teresa died. What the fudge? Clearly this is unacceptable. I might have lived with it if her demise had been glorious, but even her death sucked! Naturally, I cannot abide this. Time to rewrite history for the good of all yuridom!

Now with linebreaks! Thanks for screwing up formatting FF.

- Kirika

* * *

Teresa of the Faint Smile stood over her all but vanquished enemy, watching dispassionately as on her knees she begged for death. Fool girl, although she-'Priscilla', Teresa thought she had overheard during one of their earlier clashes-was merely a scrap of a girl now. Perhaps it would have been more compassionate if Teresa had executed Priscilla back in town when the older warrior had been considering it, rather than have the girl degenerate into the repugnant form she existed as now here in the desolate, craggy mountains. It needn't have come to this-Priscilla's pride had led her to this folly. The feral, bulbous body yet housed a human heart, however. There was something in that, at least. Priscilla would die still knowing humanity.

Mercy had stayed Teresa's hand before, and it was mercy that had her blade over the snivelling, cowed girl now. Too heavy and unwieldy for most humans and sharing the name they gave Teresa's kind, the two-handed sword-the claymore-sported in Teresa's grasp would easily take Priscilla's head quickly and painlessly when she swung it. Even the heated prior skirmishes she'd had with her former allies turned would-be assassins had not tired her arms, though the blood trickling from her forehead down her tranquil pallid face proved she hadn't escaped the encounters completely untouched.

"Alright. I'll put you out of your misery." Priscilla's head was bowed, her coursing tears dripping on the grey rock ground-waiting for the peace only a kiss of a blade could give. It wasn't the first time Teresa had been asked to perform the grim task; other sisters had sought her out in past for the final rite, though none so young, so newly birthed as Priscilla. It made no difference. There were some fates worse than death, and Priscilla was on the brink of facing one. Still, Priscilla could have been majestic; she could have been like Teresa. Even now at the end Teresa was awash in the girl's incredible yoki; it streamed off of her, so much it was an impossibility to read. A pity. Priscilla would die unsung and unfulfilled, all her vast potential squandered. And for nothing.

Teresa's grip on her claymore tightened, preparing to deliver the final blow. The tiniest sound of metal scraping stone reached her ears; so soft she might have missed it on another day. It came from below.

Instinct shot Teresa's lithe body into motion, barely the shred of a moment to draw her claymore back defensively to her chest and face. Priscilla's claymore flashed in front of her, a multitude of sparks erupting as the duplicitous girl's blade ran across the length of Teresa's own. It had been close-*very* close-but there was not an instant to spare to thought; Priscilla was on her feet, tears dried and pushing forward, determined to press the offensive onwards-determined to make a kill herself.

Priscilla's follow-up attack was as fast and brutal as her opening one-she wanted Teresa's head. Her speed was amazing, and Teresa was reeling, her guard lax and desperately trying to recover. Teresa could scarcely mount a defence, let alone think of countering. So suddenly it came. It was Teresa's end, not Priscilla's.

The edge of Priscilla's blade bit into Teresa's neck, and the older youma slayer's eyes widened in shock as her jugular was severed, several locks of wavy flaxen hair sliced cleanly along with it. The steel didn't stop, but cut deeper until it collided with Teresa's raised claymore somehow still held solid in both her hands; stalwart battle discipline, brute strength, pure luck, or all three preventing a full-blown decapitation.

But the wound was mortal enough. Arterial blood sprayed freely, and Teresa sunk to her knees as the life was sapped from her legs. The strength in her arms finally faltered; her sword suddenly a massive weight that dragged down the limbs. They dropped limply to her sides, her claymore held in the paralysed fingers of her right hand. Her view of the rough mountain range toppled, and it took her a moment to realise her face was in the dust.

Lying, *dying* on her side, Teresa saw a pool of crimson spread rapidly on the stone before her eyes. She wanted to shut it out, let her eyelids descend, and sink into the growing lethargy. The stricken warrior balanced on a knife-edge, death waiting for her should she fall.

Teresa could hear Priscilla's bestial roars and feel gusts of wind against her back, and pebbles showered the ground in front of her waning gaze. She then heard Priscilla speak, her voice devoid of the agony of humanity dying in favour of the risen demonic; it had become assured, sinister-consumed. She heard the sounds of melee waged, and the sudden, almost silent killings of her former sisters. But most of all she heard Clare's stammering voice call her name; too stunned for abject despair yet, but the plea for Teresa to not be dead; the *need* for Teresa; laced throughout.

Teresa mustered what sliver of strength she had left and reached out. Outwardly her arm weakly twitched then was dragged flaccidly through the blood and dirt nearer her sliced neck, but within the woman reached for the youma that shared half her body which she normally kept zealously suppressed. Teresa unlocked the cage; loosened the restraints; opened herself to the unholy font of power.

Her eyes suddenly flared like dying embers breathed to life, glowing with the might that dwelled behind them. But Teresa needed more. Much more if she wanted to live. And she *had* to live. Teresa hadn't seen it for herself, but she knew what great evil had manifested at her back. She was the only realistic defence Clare had against it. Teresa's assassins had stood no chance; she had bathed in Priscilla's immense yoki; Irene and the others had been mere droplets to that flood. Teresa was the best the organisation had-or did have-and even she had bent under the volume of power at Priscilla's command. The hope of victory was slim, even if Teresa could get up and bring her claymore to bear. But she would give it her all without a second thought.

It wasn't about Teresa's defection from the organisation's ranks anymore. It wasn't about duty either. None of the youma she had slain recently had been about duty, or old habits, she realised. It was about Clare and her protection. Teresa could not die yet.

Teresa's hand clamped down on the cut across her neck, staunching the wound. Her face distorted as she unleashed more of her power, beautiful serenity devolving into primitive animalistic fury. Her mouth gaped into a maw, teeth lengthening to rows of fangs. The rage of a youma saturated her, a burning for destruction in her soul, but Teresa channelled it to her crippling injury, knitting flesh and rebinding muscle. It took nearly everything her youma half had to give, so much so Teresa feared she'd have to submit herself to even more of its untapped power, however eventually she felt sensation seep into her limbs and vigour ignite in her heart, each new thump giving way to increased momentum and verve. Teresa's fingers closed into a fist around the handle of her sword.

The revived warrior arose to the sight of what Priscilla had become standing over the corpse of Irene, the demon's claymore wet with her blood. It turned, sensing Teresa.

It-Priscilla-had grown. She stood tall, maybe half again as tall as an average human. Dark blessing had bestowed her leathery wings sprouting from her back, and a single curved horn erupting from her forehead. Muscle rippled as she moved, but her figure was lissom, slender; fast as well as strong. Built for murder.

Her complexion had darkened into a blue, almost purple hue; however Priscilla's face was recognisable on the demonic form and her hair was still blonde as her sisters' had been and as Teresa's was.

But with her other mutations there was no mistaking what Priscilla had transformed into. Teresa had never laid eyes on an Awakened One before, or a 'Voracious Eater' in the human parlance-a sister that'd had the change come upon her so suddenly she'd been unable to deal her black card, or had failed to hold out long enough for the execution request to be granted-but she had heard of the curse. Rarely, *very* rarely, did it befall a sister of the organisation; normally they were better disciplined than to succumb to temptation or weakness. If Priscilla's charade under Teresa's blade had been a result of her will losing out to her youma blood or of her embracing it from the start, it mattered not. She embraced it wholeheartedly now.

"Te… resa…."

Clare's voice was soft; surprised; relieved. It was as good an inspiration as a speech from the mouth of a decorated general at the head of his army.

"You're still alive?" Priscilla said slowly, an unearthly languidness to her words. "You should have accepted the death I gave you. I tried to make it quick. Perhaps I won't be so merciful this time."

Teresa tried to control her sneer, her lips trembling as her humanity fought with the demonic within her. "Save your mercy for yourself," she spurned, her voice at least civilised with only an edge of ferocity creeping in. "You'll need it, for you'll get none from me."

A smug, ominous smile slowly bloomed on Priscilla's face. If Teresa had been awash in her foe's yoki before, she drowned in it now. Priscilla's latent potential Teresa had detected had come to fruition all at once in her demonic powerhouse of a body; she was the great challenge Teresa had prophesised she would grow to be in years to come, except realised today, here and now.

As though some silent bell had tolled, Priscilla streaked toward Teresa the precise second the woman executed her own charge, two claymores raised for battle. The demon trampled the butchered bodies of Noel and Sophia, a last indignity for the fallen sisters, before reaching Teresa and carving the air with her blade. It met with Teresa's with a mighty ring that loosened and tumbled rock around them; the older warrior leaping toward her enemy, utterly fearless. Victory or death, there was no middle ground. Neither Teresa nor Priscilla would flee, and neither would cease until their broken bodies made the decision for them.

The jarring melody of their duel continued; the thunderous clang of steel on steel over and over shaking the ground and rock faces. A thrust only to be parried; a riposte afterward only to be likewise deflected; a swing and a duck, a sweep and a jump-moves too fast for a human eye to follow, but Teresa and Priscilla traced every stab and every slice. Sparks flew, but not a drop of red or purple blood did.

Teresa's youma half raged, throwing itself against the chains the woman still kept wrapped around it. She couldn't risk releasing more of its power lest it take her. The desire was there; the urge to roar and rampage, to bring every bit of that strength against the demonic creature before her and relish in its annihilation. But it was the reckless haste of a beast. Teresa needed to maintain her discipline above all and fight like the champion she was and not as an untamed monster.

Priscilla pushed her claymore off of Teresa's, employing the force to spring backwards, putting some distance between them. Teresa's legs tensed to follow, but the slight grin from what was once a girl gave her pause.

Priscilla levelled her free hand at Teresa, fingers splayed, and then suddenly the digits elongated and surged toward the surprised woman, each finger-tendril topped with a spiked talon.

Teresa bolted, darting and diving as the tendrils flashed through the air above, below, and behind her, threatening to pin her on the spot or kill her outright. She rolled over her shoulder as Priscilla resorted to cracking her stretched fingers like whips after her, snapping over her head, but grimaced as one barb found its mark, slicing open the back of her right thigh.

Thinking nothing of the wound, Teresa was on her feet an instant later and hopping over the rocky terrain, attempting to outflank Priscilla while she was occupied with her long range assault.

"Why do you resist…? You're making me so hungry…" Priscilla drawled, fingers racing and splitting stone at Teresa's heels. "Maybe… a little… something…." She turned her head, her eyes shifting to Clare.

Teresa launched herself from the peak of a boulder, her claymore hefted over her back as she prepared to bring it down with crushing might on the Awakened One. Clare would not be a snack for Priscilla.

Priscilla's eyes darted back to Teresa and her smile widened. She lazily swept her claymore upwards at Teresa, the two blades smacking together with a tremendous bang. The vibrations in the aftermath rippled through the metal, testing Teresa's fierce grip on the weapon.

Her attack repelled and her momentum drained, Teresa was left open and in close proximity to the unholy behemoth. The air whistled as Priscilla retracted her fingers to normal length and tore at Teresa's chest with her five claws, ripping gouges in flesh. It was a feat not to scream. Teresa didn't want Clare to hear her scream.

Priscilla was not finished; her sword chopped at Teresa's head, content to end the duel with a simple beheading. Flat-footed, it was all Teresa could do to raise her armoured left shoulder.

The pauldron bore the brunt of the swing and shattered on impact, silver shards flying in every direction. Several scraped across Teresa's cheek, cutting rivulets, but they were meagre compared to the injury Priscilla's claymore would have inflicted.

It was the distraction needed however and Teresa leapt upon it, jumping back into a crouch away from Priscilla to catch her breath and regain her footing. She felt what remained of her pauldrons gradually slip and then drop off her shoulders altogether, taking her cloak with them into the dirt.

Priscilla dangled the fingers soaked with Teresa's blood above her open mouth and let a few drips land on her extended tongue. In the second that followed she spat on the ground. "The taste is wrong," she intoned. "But I could get used to it…."

Again the demon violently lashed out with her vine-like fingers, compelling Teresa to carry out an evasive roll to the side, the spears digging into the rock ground instead. The youma slayer's retort came in a vertical slash that caught one of the tendrils, severing it with a spurt of purple blood.

Priscilla unleashed her first primal roar of the battle, her fingers snapping back to her hand. Half of her middle finger was missing. She stared at, and to Teresa's escalating grim unease, the stump re-grew into a full finger right in front of her eyes.

"Did you really think there was anything you could do to kill me? There is nothing."

Priscilla's fingers sprouted once more, but this time wound around a large boulder. It broke off like brittle ice from the rest of the mountainside, and was hurled effortlessly at Teresa.

Teresa bound into the giant rock's path and brought her claymore down, smiting it into two large halves and countless rubble, and burst through the cascading stones to get to Priscilla. If Priscilla could regenerate maimed limbs, Teresa would simply cut off enough until it went beyond the demon's limit.

Teresa grunted as abruptly one of Priscilla's finger-tendrils punched into her shoulder and punctured the flesh right through the bone and out her back, trapping her in mid-flight. She snarled, her youma side expressing itself through her briefly, and swiftly lopped off the tentacle, condemning the warrior woman to a plummet to the ground. She reached behind her shoulder blade and tore out the rest of the twitching appendage as she fell, and crushed it in her fist upon landing.

A blast of wind and speckles of dust hit Teresa, and she saw Priscilla beat her wings and take flight. The finger barbs shot at her again, the lost digit already healed, and Teresa was forced to stoop and sidestep to elude them until all five had pierced into the rock at her rear. The warrior sensed movement behind her and barely twisted her body enough to avoid being impaled as the tendrils curled and reversed their thrusts, attempting a sneak attack at her back after she had dismissed them. Teresa was not quick enough to dodge them completely however; one wrapped around her waist and another squeezed around her throat while a third laboured to withhold her sword arm, and all three lifted her into the skies as Priscilla soared higher above the mountains.

Teresa struggled ferociously, frantically trying to get her claymore free to slice her binds. Higher still Priscilla climbed, riding the cold mountain drafts. Too high. A fall from this height would likely pulverise Teresa. Yet still the warrior fought, one hand raking at the tendril wringing the life out of her, while her sword arm pitted its might against another tendril.

Suddenly Teresa bellowed, and her bicep bulged, potent youma strength rushing into the limb as she relaxed the chains suppressing her demonic power. She wrenched the arm, separating sinew as she stretched the finger-tendril to its limits, until finally it exploded in gouts of purple blood. Her claymore unbound, she hacked off the tentacle around her neck and the one around her body, but held on tightly to one of the writhing appendages as they retreated in pain to their mistress-bringing Teresa with them.

Priscilla glanced down-too late to see Teresa was flying through the air toward her. The youma slayer used the pull of the finger-tendril to propel herself into the Awakened One and drive her claymore to the hilt in the creature's stomach.

Priscilla's ascent dwindled and then she started to fall, her lifeless wings fluttering uselessly against the buffeting of the wind during the descent. Teresa held on to her blade's handle all but kneeling on top of the demon's stomach, enduring the plunge with her enemy.

The ground rushing up to meet them, Teresa scowled as she noticed Priscilla was alive and smiling at her. She grabbed Teresa's claymore with her one clawed hand, gradually pulling it from her gut, while hammering the pommel of her own sword again and again against the woman's back. Priscilla's intended for her to release into the sky and surely die or become wholly crippled when she struck the mountainside, easy pickings to finish off at the demon's leisure.

The cutting wind brought stinging tears to Teresa's eyes, but she did not let go. This was for Clare. Even if the fall killed her and Priscilla both, it was a good outcome.

At the last possible instant, Priscilla unfolded her wings and soared just above the ground, wheeling away from impact. Teresa kicked off of her chest, tugging her blood-splattered sword with her, and somersaulted onto blessed solid ground, tearing clefts in the rock where her feet skidded.

It was not over. Priscilla veered back around and swooped in, slashing with her claymore, her gaping stomach wound not seeming to be a problem for her. Teresa skirted the gleaming blade and spun around, readying herself for a second aerial charge.

As Priscilla neared, Teresa this time took the fight to her and leapt into the skies, intercepting the Awakened One midway in her descent. Yet Teresa was as a gnat to Priscilla's airborne superiority; the demon's sword smashed against Teresa's, smacking her back down to earth. The woman landed hard, pounding a crater into the stone.

It required an enormous effort to roll aside as Priscilla whipped past her, the Awakened One's claymore scraping the ground where she had lain. Teresa was hurting; her wounds finally taking a toll on her strength and slowing her down. Conversely Priscilla appeared still at her peak-*nothing* Teresa had wreaked upon her had weakened her. Despair wanted to emerge, a new emotion for the undefeated Teresa, but she held it at bay. Clare needed her resolve, her *strength* right now, not her hopelessness.

Priscilla returned for yet another diving run, but Teresa stood to meet it. Their claymores flashed at the same moment they passed each other.

Priscilla barked an unearthly cry and spun out of control through the air while Teresa dropped to one knee, nursing a deep gash in her side that poured blood over her white glove.

"Clare!" Teresa yelled, whirling around.

Clare, half in a daze, scrambled to her feet and ran for her life just before Priscilla careered into the rocks behind her, demolishing the formations to smithereens. Through the dust Teresa saw the silhouette of the demon rise, bellowing with all fury of the unholy, her left wing riddled with a spasm before folding against her back. Priscilla would not fly again, for now.

Teresa forced herself to her feet and shook her head, the blood in her eyes spattering on the ground. The tip of her claymore dragged along the rock as she struggled toward Priscilla, needing to finish it soon before her foe regenerated and before she succumbed to her injuries or was too weak to put up a fight. Her youma half did its utmost to tend to her ravaged body, but its power waned as her own did. It could not do much.

Teresa stood at the rim of the destruction created by Priscilla's crash landing and hefted her claymore upright, seizing it in both hands. Her head. It was Teresa's best hope. Remove Priscilla's head and she would not recover from that. Teresa prayed she would not recover from that.

"You've made me move so much…" Priscilla crooned, limping slightly through the settling dust. She was bleeding in places, but nowhere near to the degree Teresa suffered. "I'm so hungry now. That town… I'll have to devour the entire town. Every… single… one of them…."

Teresa charged. There wasn't anything to say. It was all or nothing; victory or death indeed.

Priscilla blocked her incoming slice, but Teresa moved with it, her weapon bouncing from the deflection to spin her body around and lash out again in the opposite direction, the razor edge aiming for the neck. All or nothing.

To Teresa's shock, Priscilla, missing none of her alacrity, dropped her head and locked the horn embedded in her forehead against the wishful sword, the bone proving the tougher. Her offensive stalled past salvation, Teresa had nothing to prevent her cruel and immediate impalement on the end of Priscilla's claymore.

"Not pleasant, is it? But appropriate…."

Teresa gasped, and then choked as her breath was engulfed with collecting blood in the back of her throat. She had lost. She had been defeated. She clawed desperately for the youma that shared her soul, reaching for something, *anything*; opened herself to everything it had, everything it was. But there was nothing to reach for; nothing left.

Teresa's face calmed into pain-wracked beauty and her eyes dimmed to silver jewels as her youma rage faded from her body, lacking the strength to even maintain it. It abandoned her dying form, knowing she was beyond hope, beyond saving. Teresa would be another corpse like Irene and Noel and Sophia, exterminated in the awakening of a grand demon-a footnote during its ascension. And Clare's corpse would soon join hers. Teresa had failed utterly and without redemption.

Tears amassed in her glassy, silvery pools; tears not for herself, but shed for the young girl she had let down.

"Teresa… Teresa!"

Clare screamed for her, but a mouthful of blood was all the answer Teresa could give. The woman prayed she would run and not stay to witness this-run and *live*.

Teresa tried to look back, tried to capture the image of the young girl that had opened her to so much one last time, but she couldn't see through the blur of tears. Soon she couldn't even keep her head up. Her muscles slackened; her arms boneless at her sides. _Clare_.

"Shh…" Priscilla whispered, and in a cloudy corner of her eye Teresa saw the demon point her fingers at her.

"TERESA!"

The finger-tendrils flew forth, streaking for Teresa's face.

Blood erupted from Teresa's mouth as her left hand shot out and snatched all five tendrils in an iron grip, twisting them away from her head. They flailed wildly, already correcting course, but this was Teresa's moment. Death would have to wait a little longer. As long as some sliver of life persisted inside her, human or youma, she would use it to protect Clare.

Teresa raised her head and her sword, lifting the length of the claymore's blade straight upwards parallel to the ground in a vicious uppercut. She cleaved through flesh and bone, shearing off Priscilla's arm at the wrist and every elongated finger in one deft move. Time slowed as Teresa was aware of every grain of energy she had pumping in her veins, every scrap she had left to dedicate to Clare's defence. Her arm came down, the edge of her claymore cutting into Priscilla's shoulder and further, deeper, bursting out of the Awakened One's ruined hip as she completed the diagonal blow.

The demon's segmented torso whirled in the air with the sheer force of the attack, turning upside down. Teresa dropped the wriggling tentacles to grab her claymore in her two hands and reverse her slash, heaving the heavy steel back over her head. She did what she had meant to do from the start. Priscilla's severed head spun like a top, holding in the air for a second, and then fell and rolled at Teresa's feet. The girl's face stared up at her, astonishment written over it. The demonic light had vanished from her eyes.

Priscilla's legs and what was left of her abdomen toppled, and Teresa feebly stabbed her bloodied claymore into the ground and crumpled to her knees. One hand still clutched the blade's handle; the only thing keeping her upright. With her other hand she grasped Priscilla's sword that ran through her middle and eased it out of her body. There was no pain, now.

"Teresa! Teresa!"

Priscilla had been the challenge and more that Teresa had known her to be. But a challenge did not mean a surety of defeat. Not until you admitted it yourself. It was Teresa's most triumphant victory, her greatest battle. It took a team of sisters to do what she had achieved today. But for the first time she had *really* fought for something. Something she believed in. Something that was worth wielding the claymore for.

Teresa's vision lurched, fading in and out, and through the sheet of blood and failing sight she saw Clare come for her, weeping torrents down her pretty face. Teresa wished for more; their time had been so short. Yet the feelings she had experienced then had been a lifetime's. Teresa never knew her body could hold such emotion; have such heart. There was no weakness in feeling. She'd had a real purpose for fighting; for living day to day. She'd enjoyed life for once, seen more beyond the duty, seen that compassion was not a lost concept for her. Teresa had had a passion that being a sister of the organisation had never provided her with. Teresa had been human.

Teresa smiled the faint smile she was named for. Her grip on her sword slipped. She fell.

* * *

Teresa's silver eyes crept open, and was surprised that they could, and by her surroundings. She was in a bed in a cosy room, swaddled in rough bandages that smelt of crude salves. A room at the last town's inn, she recognised. One that hadn't been destroyed.

None of the inn room's trappings interested Teresa however; it was the girl hugging herself on a chair at her bedside that her bleary gaze tried focusing on.

"Clare…."

Clare looked a little worse for wear; dirty and dishevelled, akin to the time they had first encountered one another.

"Teresa…!" Clare perked up immediately, but her voice rapidly lost liveliness. "You're awake…. You were asleep for so long…. Days…."

"And it looks like you've had no sleep." Teresa panned her gaze around the room again. "How did I get here…?" Teresa's brow furrowed, spotting her tattered cloak and her sheathed claymore on a table at the foot of the bed. She was impressed Clare had managed to retrieve her sword from where she had embedded it in the mountainside.

"I… carried you… on that." Clare glanced at Teresa's frayed and grubby cloak.

"You…?" For such a young and scrawny girl, it was tremendous accomplishment.

Clare nodded solemnly. "The town apothecary tended you…. We didn't have to pay because of what you did, with that youma…" Clare explained softly, looking down at her bruised and scraped hands balled on her lap. "I was so scared…" Her voice shook, and although her light brown fringe curtained her eyes, Teresa could tell of her tears.

"I'm sorry…" Teresa turned her head away, gazing out the window. "I wish you hadn't seen me like that. My face…."

"Not your face," Clare said, leaning forwards to gingerly place her hand over Teresa's.

The woman turned back sheepishly. "Oh."

Clare carefully lay beside Teresa on the bed, still warming the woman's hand, and stared intently into her eyes. Teresa could see the wet trails her crying had scoured through the grime on her face. "When you're better, we'll go far away. So far away they won't ever find us," Clare's heartfelt whispers murmured in Teresa's ear.

Teresa merely smiled that faint smile of hers, wise enough to understand that the organisation would never stop no matter where they went. But she'd fight them all-every single one they sent. And she'd beat them. No one, not even they, could take away what Teresa had found. She should have died on that mountainside. Nothing should have saved her; her body too broken to go on, the foe too overwhelming. But she had survived. She had smote her enemy. And it wasn't her skill that had kept her fighting. It wasn't the youma in her. It had been her humanity. It had been her love.

It had been Clare.

* * *

The End… for now.

Author's ramblings:

Wow, that turned out rather short! But think of it as an alternate ending to episode 8, rather than a short story in itself. I'm very likely going to make a series of ongoing one-shots centred on Teresa and Clare as they are now, and this fic was a nice little wrap up of the old and a new beginning for that purpose. Teresa is too awesome a character to forget about.

Thanks to sosofine78 for Claymore research help, and for bugging me enough to write this one-shot. ^_^


	2. Sacrifices

Sacrifices - by Kirika

* * *

Teresa and Clare's adventures continue!

- Kirika

* * *

The man in black knelt and picked up one of dozens of steel splinters all shapes and sizes scattered across the rocky ground. It winked at him in the sunlight, the metal polished to luminescent silver. She still lived.

The man panned his eyes across the mountainous expanse, his dark tinted glasses flashing their own glint as they caught the sun. This was a battlefield. Boulders were smashed and the ground was scarred, telling a vague account of some titanic conflict. But it was the blood that spoke of the consequential carnage. That, and the brutalised bodies.

Number four and number five, Sophia and Noel, lay slain. What eyes they had still intact were wide open-they hadn't expected it. They bore numerous injuries, but it was array of puncture wounds caked with dark dried blood from chest to head that had spelled their doom. Too small and round to be inflicted with a claymore; but a glance a short distance away revealed the instrument of the sisters' destruction.

Among rubble and beside a long furrow scored into the earth, the caricature of the number two, Priscilla, made her grave. She had lost herself, evolving into what every sister and member of the organisation dreaded. The young Priscilla looked to have gone over her limit and turned on her allies, killing Sophia and Noel, before later being slain herself. Her reign as an Awakened One had been brief, ending violently. Her head rested a metre from her body, and that was cleaved in two along the diagonal, the organs and offal spilled out in a purplish sludge baked in the sun. Her severed hand still held the handle of her claymore nearby, the last of the mutilation. So much for her skill. So much for her potential. The man in black and his peers had been wrong to tout her abilities and future in the organisation. They'd barely gotten any use out of her.

The number three must have slain her-no, an awakening of Priscilla's calibre would have created a demon to effortlessly overwhelm her. Flash Sword Irene perhaps had disobeyed her orders and joined with the rebel Teresa of the Faint Smile to face this unforeseen and powerful foe. It was good that the creature was dead; it would have come back to trouble the organisation later, no doubt; but a pity it hadn't killed the deserter.

And there was the possibility that the organisation had *another* deserter on their hands. The bodies of Teresa or that slip of a girl she travelled with were not beside the other dead, and neither was the number three's. There was an amputated arm that after a quick count between the corpses indicated that one of the missing women had left it behind, but that was all they had left. It could be that Irene had died of her wounds and was waiting to be found somewhere down the mountain, or was recovering elsewhere and would report in soon. But perhaps the alliance to eliminate Priscilla had not been a temporary solution, but rather a permanent partnership. Time would yield Irene's fate in a clearer light. She would not be forgotten. The organisation kept track of their property.

The man in black stood up and tossed the silver shard aside. He straightened his wide-brimmed had over his bald head, peering along the brim to the town erected at the base of the mountain range. It appeared the rankings had to be shifted again. The fallen sisters' remains and equipment needed to be seen to as well, and more of the warriors summoned for the hunt. Irene needed to be accounted for too. It would be days before those sisters in range could be reached, and days more before they converged on the town below, and he was dubious that even together they would be a match for Teresa judging by what the bloodshed on the mountain narrated to him. Maybe a greater number of her former sisters this time; seven or eight, if they could be spared.

She was probably down there now, on the verge of moving on if she was able, and smart. A stroll through town might shed more light on her circumstances, but it was not the man in black's risk to take. Teresa had become unpredictable. The once reliable doll had murdered; her fall from grace total and her power, like Priscilla's, misspent. Who was to say he wouldn't be subject to her wrath, if properly riled? Sisters would make the journey instead. Should they die, there was always more to call.

* * *

Her long black cloak wrinkled and snapped in the sporadic breeze, its bottom streaked with dusty stains after relentless travel. Her steel boots had suffered similar wear, the grime from many packed dirt roads caked against the once burnished metal, the scuffs and mud taking the shine out. Underneath her dark swaddling her clothes were nothing more than a vagabond's rags, the regal stripped from the livery via the rigours of battle. Her sword, its sheath broken; another casualty of combat; she was forced to hold drawn, the blade propped against one shoulder. The perceived threat it brandished had travellers keep their distance, although the cowl pulled low over her eyes probably didn't help soften her look either.

The woman's attire was not fit for travel, but rest stops were a luxury with hounds on your heels. She had already walked straight on through three towns, and a fourth was in sight. Despite what her dishevelled clothing may imply and the distance she had already come, her legs powered on without a trace of fatigue setting in. She could go on past a handful more towns, for days and through nights. But Teresa of the Faint Smile wasn't alone.

Clare struggled beside her, stubbornly insistent on carrying the lightest of their supplies yet labouring with them nonetheless. For her scrawny appearance she was a robust girl, her stamina keeping her up with Teresa and without the blonde woman having to slow her pace. However Clare was human, and a young human at that, and her grit would only last as long as her body had strength. They had to stop. A couple of hours wouldn't hurt, but Teresa could almost feel her former comrades' breaths on her neck.

Teresa had left the mountain town of Gagarak as soon as she had been able to stand; too many days had she slumbered there where sisters had fought, and close by, had died. The townspeople could not be trusted anymore-following the destruction Teresa had brought to their quiet hamlet appreciation for her youma slaying had likely dulled; the smiles of awe and gratitude decaying into bitter mutterings and gruff looks.

And of course there were the replacements for her would-be executioners. More sisters had probably been days away after the deaths of Irene and the others, but Teresa had spent most of those days lying in an inn's bedroom, healing under the watchful wide eyes of Clare. Gagarak had been out of welcome and time for Teresa and Clare; putting distance between the town and themselves had been the blonde's immediate priority.

The time on the road had seen Teresa's scars and bruises mend fully into new pink flesh, her strength recovering with her body, although she still sported most of the bandages she had first woken up swathed in. She could still smell the pungent balm pong hanging about her, just over the earthy aroma of travel muck. A bath would be nice, but it was a comfort waiting for her in a different town, beyond the one on the horizon.

Ten minutes more spent on the road delivered Teresa and Clare into the town ahead; 'Deluthron' a skewed and battered signpost named just before the path became a street. It was a smallish town, pretty much defined by its wide main street, its buildings erected alongside and a couple of smaller lanes between the clusters of houses and shops. The buildings themselves, once upon a time colourful, had seen better days; their coats of paint were cracked and faded, windows were streaked with old dirt and shutters hung on rusted and sagging hinges, and tiles were chipped and missing on many roofs.

The townsfolk barely lifted their heads as Teresa and Clare passed, and they had a shuffling, hunched way of moving from place to place. It was chiefly middle-aged and elderly faces that Teresa glimpsed before they turned away, but what youth there was were devoid of cheer. Even the marketplace near the centre of town was a subdued affair; vendors content that customers browse on their own accord rather than shout the merit of their wares. The handful of young children she saw played boisterously nevertheless, running and skipping through the lanes and between stalls and enjoying themselves as children should.

The dismal cloud hanging over the town was obvious, but it was still a town like most others Teresa had visited slaying youma. That said, she was relieved her and Clare's time in Deluthron would be brief.

"We'll stop here for a while."

Clare simply nodded up at Teresa, accepting the probably very welcome respite with no more than that. She was not one to complain.

Teresa smiled and rested her hand on top of Clare's hooded head. The woman's life until a week ago had been so straightforward, and now all that had defined her existence before then was no more. Her allies were now her enemies, the duty she had been bred for was abandoned, and she was in more danger now than she ever had been raising her sword against youma. She had killed humans, she had taken one in, and she had no clue where she was going next. Teresa had never felt more alive.

And it was all thanks to the young girl beside her. There was no going back, but for Teresa, forward was the only way she wanted to go… with Clare.

"Why don't you find the town well and fill our water bag. Drink as much as you need too, and clean that dirty face of yours." Teresa ran a finger down the side of Clare's nose, tracing a dark smudge along the bridge from too long a journey. "Be careful. I'll be close by."

Clare ran off with the wilting water bag in her arms, dutiful as always, and leaving Teresa wondering how she had ever done without her. With Teresa's youma blood it was not like she needed a constant quantity of water, or any supplies beyond what she wore really, but at moments like this the woman didn't remember that. She only saw that Clare was there, quick to help, a steadfast travel companion. How lonely had the roads been without the girl? Years Teresa had trekked by herself, leagues beaten beneath her steel boots, and not all the sights and all the roads combined matched the pleasure she garnered now from travel even when on the bleakest of paths. The company made all the difference. It was company no other than Clare could provide; Teresa couldn't imagine being satisfied with anyone else in her place. Teresa's heart had made its choice.

Teresa wandered the small town a few steps, peering down this lane and that in search of what services Deluthron offered. There was an inn and a single tavern; usually standard for even the tiniest backwater village; and some sundry stores-farming supplies, bakeries, seamstresses and weavers, butchers and carpenters-that the locals would have use for, not those just passing through.

But there was one sign that caught Teresa's eye. On one half a hammer above an anvil was stylised, and on the other a broadsword over a platemail cuirass. A smithy Teresa had expected to find, but that *and* an armourer and weaponsmith was a novelty in this ramshackle town. Perhaps the sign hyped the shop's actual faculties and she'd have to settle for the tailor down the neighbouring street to replace her rags, however it was worth a look.

Teresa heard the pitter-patter of Clare's feet on the dirt street behind her, and turned to see the girl run up to her, wet and bloated water bag in hand, and a face as fresh as a daisy. She stopped in front of Teresa and lifted the bag up to the woman, blinking expectantly.

"That's fine," Teresa declined, shaking her head. "Come on. I think I need a change of wardrobe."

Teresa led Clare into the armoury; a mostly stonework building with a wooden upper storey. It was dusty and gloomy; the glass in the small windows were frosted a dark green that let in very little light, though the dust was all neglect. A modest number of weapons hung in racks bolted into the stone walls-swords and maces and axes and morning stars; nothing near the scale of Teresa's claymore-and whatever lustre they'd possessed right after forging had been dulled greatly since then. It was a fate shared by the few chain, ring, and platemail pieces dressed on wooden dummies; simple townsfolk had no need for heavy duty arms and armour.

The wooden shop counter had smaller blades arranged for sale upon it in better repair however; daggers and speciality knives not meant for war, but for a different, calmer sort of field. On the wall behind the counter studded leather jerkins and leggings and other light protection sat on shelves, also in better keep.

The only thing else of note behind the counter was the fat, balding proprietor of the shop. He was not the smith, that much was certain; his flabby arms and sagging gut told he did not bang a hammer all day.

The man was talking to the armoury's sole other customer across the counter; another male, and by his worn and dirty boots and hooded cloak, and the multitude of packs slung over his back, was a hard traveller like Teresa and Clare. They kept talking as though the warrior and her young charge hadn't entered, but Teresa and Clare were happy to quietly browse the wares, and in the latter woman's case at least, do a bit of eavesdropping.

"It's war for sure, then?" the shop owner was saying, leaning on the counter.

"That's what they're sayin'. Everyone's rounding up as much as they can get and cart in there before a surplus knocks the prices down. I wouldn't even be here if Yewine wasn't picked clean."

The shopkeeper grunted at that, and dug his thumb into his nose. "Glad I charged you near double in that case," he muttered, and then wiped his thumb on his stained white apron.

"Hmph. I'll make *triple* that in Karesia," the other man said; a profiteering merchant by the sound of it. "Bloody bandits everywhere though, so I hear. Might have to use some of these weapons meself."

The merchant lumbered out of the store, almost doubled over with all the bags lugged over his shoulders. He probably had a wagon somewhere to transport that amount of weapons and armour to the city states of Karesia in the north. It was quite a distance away.

"Looking for something in mind?" the shopkeeper lazily addressed Teresa and Clare, still slouched over the counter and occasionally picking his nose.

"Armour. Something light and manoeuvrable," Teresa spoke.

"A lady?" The storeowner perked up. "Not many lady warriors roaming about. Or much call for lady-specific armour. Those bosoms get in the way, eh?" He smirked lasciviously and scratched himself, and then rubbed his chins thoughtfully. "Might have a few bits and pieces. Nothing in light plate, that's for sure."

"Leather would suffice," Teresa said. Her uniform was in tatters, and not to mention a beacon for what she was-one that passers-by could remember, and that her pursuers could track. Some things she couldn't change; her silver eyes, her claymore-she would never give that up-but the garments the organisation had bestowed upon her could be. The light grey outfit with its black collar, marked with her symbol, no longer represented what she truly was anyway; she'd forever be half-youma, but she'd never serve the organisation again.

The shopkeeper grumbled as he hauled black masses of leather from the shelves behind the counter, plumes of dust kicking up at the disturbance. He blew on the leather apparel once it was on the counter, sending more dust showers into the air. The armour was possibly years old; Teresa hoped it wasn't riddled with cracks or so stiff that she may as well have been wearing a full platemail suit.

"Yeah, had this thing custom made for some woman way back," the shopkeeper said casually, patting the cuirass. "Some caravan guard. Got turned into a pincushion before she could pick it up. Thank the Gods she paid in advance!" He grinned, showing missing teeth.

Teresa was hardly listening to the man's callous story, instead sizing up the leather suit in her head. It should fit, but she'd have to try it on to see if it would meet her requirements. Besides what steel pieces she wore, the youma slayer did not fight armoured. She was accustomed to that and had to be positive that wearing even the lightest form of protection wouldn't weigh her down or restrict her motion, or hinder her swordsmanship in any fashion. Settling on simple peasant clothing was a choice, however wandering around armed as she was implied she was a mercenary or soldier, and Teresa would prefer to stoke that image. No warrior-no *human* warrior-clad themselves in mere cloth.

"I need to try it on," Teresa said.

"Oh, by all means…" the shopkeeper replied, his grin widening.

Teresa stood there, staring at him from beneath the shadow of her cowl, before sighing. She wasn't a stickler for privacy; she didn't guard her body with the same possessiveness most humans did; but the man's demeanour was still irritating.

Teresa propped her sword against the counter and pulled off her cloak, handing the black bundle to Clare. She couldn't continue hiding what she was now.

"C-Claymore?" the shopkeeper gagged, gaping and gawking.

Teresa ignored his reaction and started to wriggle out of her uniform; bracers and boots and skirt first, and then her shredded suit. She heard the holes rip a little wider as she took the garment off.

Clare gasped and all of a sudden was in front of Teresa, holding out the woman's cloak as a curtain for her nudity. The expression on her face was very serious, and she glared at the shop owner crossly, who had the decency now to seem chagrined.

"Hey…" Teresa said, raising an eyebrow at her diminutive companion. From what Teresa had seen, Clare wasn't one of those humans who guarded their body; it was odd for her to care about modesty on this occasion. Besides, the majority of humans couldn't stomach the… alterations… youma blood inflicted on a sister's body. Clare was in fact the first Teresa had met who could.

Teresa reached over her pint-sized protector to retrieve the armour and squeezed into it piece by piece, fitting it over her bandaged body. It took some time; the leather was all buckles and straps that would make removing it just as annoying, but at least they saw to a secure fit. The boots she left-her steel pair were still serviceable, along with her bracers that she snapped over her leather-encased forearms.

The final piece was a short skirt similar to the one attached to her uniform only less for show; strips of hard, stiff leather with diamond cut hems, metal edgings and rivets keeping them from fraying. For a moment Teresa weighed whether it would be worth simply salvaging her uniform's steel skirt instead, but thought better of it. While her boots and bracers could be run-of-the-mill for a warrior, the skirt in addition might end up being the giveaway that she was actually a youma slayer groomed by the organisation.

Teresa clenched a fist, and then peered over her shoulder at her rump, testing her range of motion. The leather creaked when she moved, however it was oiled enough to have sufficient give. A good thing-it was as form-fitting as armour came, a second skin, hugging her hips with the tenacity of an ardent lover. The weight was fine; Teresa wondered if the caravan guard who had commissioned the suit had been a scout or an archer; someone needing to be fleet of foot.

The leather wouldn't stop more than a glancing blow, but it was a disguise more than anything else. Teresa wasn't one to sustain so much as a single scratch in battle either; it took monumental foes to shed her blood.

Teresa planted one hand on her hip. "Well, what do you think?" she posed to Clare.

The girl frowned, holding her guardian's tattered uniform and folded cloak in front of her chest now that the woman had finished changing. "Black is scary."

"Oh?" Teresa drawled, as if she never knew that. She wasn't about to undo all those buckles again, though. "It will do. I'll take it," she directed to the shopkeeper. "Everything except the boots."

"Ahh… well, you see, it comes as a set, so… I'm afraid if you want to leave the boots here, I'll still have to charge you the full price," the greasy man chanced. His tone was ingratiating now that Teresa had revealed herself as what she was, yet his lust for profit still came first even in the face of a silvery-eyed destroyer of demons. "Times are hard."

Teresa suspected times were always hard for this man. "And I suppose that merchant before held off payment until his next visit?"

The shopkeeper merely chuckled uneasily, wringing his hands.

Teresa skimmed the counter with its display of small blades, and then plucked a stiletto she deemed the best quality from the bunch. It was light and thin; she tossed it in the air and perched it on its point on a fingertip for several seconds, before snatching it up again. The stiletto was decently balanced; it could probably be thrown with fairly good accuracy, but the blonde woman sought its stabbing talent primarily.

"Full price, but I'll take this for free," Teresa said.

"Err…" the shop owner hesitated, Teresa no doubt picking his finest if not the finest blade he had.

"Then it's a deal," Teresa pressed, not waiting for more lies or excuses.

The shopkeeper, despite his nervousness, had the gall to try and overcharge her when it came time for money to exchange hands; however Teresa was having none of it, and mildly intimidated and pressured him to lower the price until it became reasonable. The stipends Teresa had taken for granted were a thing of the past now that she had forsaken her rich benefactor; she had to be frugal with her gold.

The shopkeeper turned away with his money, grumbling under his breath, while Teresa turned to Clare. "This is yours," the woman said, offering the stiletto to her companion, handle first.

Clare stared at the weapon, her eyes rather big. "Mine?"

"It's just a precaution, but I would like you to have a way to defend yourself. Should you need to." Teresa hoped that would never be; that she would always be there to protect Clare, but it was unrealistic to think she would be watching the girl every solitary second, as much as wanted to.

Clare took the stiletto gingerly, as though it was a flighty animal, and stared at it some more in her hands. "Don't cut yourself," Teresa warned. The stiletto was designed for stabbing, but its edge was still quite sharp.

"Is your blacksmith here?" Teresa asked the shopkeeper. He was bent over an open chest, likely his strongbox for his takings.

"Through the arch on the left," the man muttered, not looking round. "His work ain't free," he miserly noted.

Teresa stepped through the indicated arch, with Clare lagging behind, into a cramped smithy. It was merely a storage room converted for its new purpose; forge and anvil and bellows and cooling troughs all crammed into the tight space, which left little for anything else, including walking. Hammers and tongs and pokers hung on the soot-stained brick walls, and a pile of coal had been dumped unceremoniously in one corner. The heat of the forge in the close confines had perspiration start to bead on Teresa's brow and caused her new armour to feel snugger than it was a minute ago.

Working the smithy was a giant of a man in a long tan leather apron, beating a small hammer against a cast iron pan atop the anvil. A layer of sweat shone on his bald head, glowing in the light of the hot coals, and the greying ends of his big bushy brown moustache puffed out with his breath during each swing he took. He was burly, sporting a belly that had seen too much beer, but he wasn't built like the shopkeeper outside. He had muscle.

"Blacksmith! I have need of your services," Teresa called over the din of metal smacking metal.

The blacksmith looked up and then frowned at her, no doubt catching the silver light in her gaze. "What would a Claymore need from the likes of me?" he rumbled.

"Why, your hammer of course," Teresa said, walking closer. "What else?" She reached into the small pack Clare carried and pulled out her remaining pauldron and her circular claymore sheath still attached to it, minus her old ripped cloak that had been discarded days ago in Gagarak. "I require some work done to these, so they will be serviceable again."

Teresa handed the hunk of broken steel over to the blacksmith. He brought it close to his face, scouring the surface with his eyes. "I've never seen work like this," he spoke after a long moment of staring. "The tempering…. A master's work. I could only hope to… one day…." He shook his head in wonder, and then ran his thumb over the break near the sheath, where Priscilla had shattered the missing pauldron. "I don't think I want to know what fractured it like this."

"Another master's work," Teresa answered anyway. A grandmaster's in truth; the organisation employed only the greatest armour and weaponsmiths, and their forges smelted only the finest quality ore.

"I can't repair this," the blacksmith humbly admitted, trying to pass the armour back to the blonde. "I have the steel, but it would be a peasant's labour against the original. It would never be as strong."

"Then just modify the sheath and existing pauldron so they can be used again. Any leftover steel is yours, naturally."

The blacksmith took the armour back and examined it closely again. "I suppose… a leather harness and some buckles, maybe…."

"Ensure the leather's dyed scary black," Teresa said, giving Clare a wry look.

* * *

The blacksmith had cleared a space on the only bench in the smithy for Teresa and Clare to sit and wait while he performed his trade. It was probably a test of his skills, but the youma slayer had faith in him since there was nothing else she could do, the outcome out of her hands now. It would be irritating to still be without a sword sheath if he happened to botch it, though.

As the minutes rolled into hours, Teresa felt Clare's petite body droop against her, the girl's head resting on her arm as Clare's time on the road at last caught up with her and plunged her into an exhausted sleep, even amid the constant raking of coals and banging of a hammer. Teresa was careful to move very slowly and as little as possible as she manoeuvred to gaze down at her drowsy companion, smiling indulgently at her cute features relaxed in slumber. She slipped her arm around Clare and held her close; keeping her warm she told herself, though knowing the forge was warmth enough. There was nothing wrong with being protective of her. Teresa had given everything up for Clare; *Clare* was that everything now.

"The war in Karesia… is it true?" Teresa put to the blacksmith, keeping her voice as quiet as it could be.

For a while Teresa believed he hadn't heard her over his loud work, but eventually his gruff voice came over his hammer blows. "True enough that every soldier for hire and armsdealer is heading out there," he said.

Karesia fell under the organisation's jurisdiction, but with the war it was likely that everything was in chaos. And it was easy for somebody-or some*bodies*-to get lost in chaos.

"Ah… Claymore?"

The shopkeeper had stuck his head into the smithy, the grin plastered on his face attempting to be sycophantic, but an oily creepiness was all he accomplished. "I wonder…. Would you be interested in helping our fair town? I mean, it's work that… your sort… carries out. You would be generously paid of course…."

"There are youma harrying this town?" Teresa questioned, her brow puckering. She had felt no yoki during her short meander through Deluthron's streets, and she still detected none at present.

"Yes… one. Eh, one, we believe," the shop owner said. "It is fortu- for- *lucky* that you happened here, yes?"

"Why didn't you mention this earlier?"

"Oh, it is not I who am in charge of such, er, business. Our town is run by a small council, and I am merely its humble messenger," the shopkeeper explained, his every word oozing grease. Teresa wasn't sure he could help it.

Teresa sighed. Slaying a youma would all but announce her presence to the townspeople, if it hadn't been already by the corpulent 'messenger'. The gossipmongering would be ignited, and travel at speed as it always did to other villages and settlements, further spreading word of her appearance. However, Teresa already knew she was going to accept the request. She needed the reward money for once, especially after her spending here in the armoury-living off the land was fine for Teresa, but her diminutive companion deserved a warm bed and good food at an inn now and then. Clare would harp at her if she left the youma alone to prey on Deluthron anyway.

"Very well," Teresa agreed, picking up her claymore where it was leaning against the bench. It pained her to rouse Clare; the girl looked so peaceful sleeping next to her; but where Teresa went Clare followed. In any case, leaving her by herself fast asleep in an enclosed shop with two men; one overtly dubious; was never an option.

"Very good, very good," the shopkeeper grinned. "The council has the details. I'll see you to them."

Gentle shaking had Clare's eyes creeping open and mumbling addled nonsense into Teresa's arm, and a few seconds later she was up and about, if yawning every other step. Teresa stood up and slung her sword over her shoulder again, exhaling deeply afterwards at how old the manoeuvre was becoming.

"I'm sure Georuf here will have finished your blacksmith work by the time you return," the shopkeeper said as if reading the blonde warrior's displeasure, eyeing the brawny man at the anvil.

Georuf looked up and grunted, before his gaze dropped back to his toil.

The shopkeeper led Teresa and Clare out to the street and through several others to the town's only tavern that the youma slayer had sighted shortly after her arrival-'The Hare's Luck'. Its sign was as weatherworn as every other establishment's in Deluthron, down to depicting a greyish smudge that looked vaguely in the likeness of the aforementioned hare outpacing a sneering black wolf with its fur raised up into a series of spikes.

The shopkeeper stopped short of entering the tavern. He glanced back the way they had come, his feet shuffling in the dirt, clearly itching to go back to his store with its unattended wares. "In there. They'll recognise you, what with those eyes."

Teresa stepped into the Hare's Luck under the shopkeeper's shifty looks and held the door open for Clare to pass through. As soon as they had crossed the threshold the shopkeeper had disappeared, no doubt racing toward his shop as quickly as his girth allowed.

No one in the tavern bothered to look at the newcomers joining their midst, not that there were many patrons at this hour. It didn't feel like a place that lit up lively at evenings either, however. People stared blankly into their mugs, hunched over them as though their drink may be stolen if they weren't vigilant. The bartender sat on a stool behind his bar, dozing with folded arms, nothing to do-not even the typical polishing of cups. Teresa couldn't spot any barmaids; with this clientele it wasn't a surprise, she doubted that even the buxom variety could instil life here.

Three townsfolk set apart from the rest of the Hare's Luck's dismal customers by their cheerier expressions and better cut of clothing all occupying the same table turned in their chairs to wave to Teresa. The blonde youma slayer approached them, assuming they were Deluthron's council she was meant to meet. If they were daunted by her sword she openly flaunted, they hid it well. For that matter no one else was frightened by Teresa's appearance, although everyone seemed too mired in their sorrows to glance in her direction, let alone care.

"Claymore," one of the councilmen greeted, a young man with a small black goatee. "Please sit down. May we order you a drink?"

"I don't drink and it would be rude to wake the barkeep," Teresa said flippantly, slinging her black cloak over the crude wooden chair and sitting down, crossing her legs. She had left the cloak's hood down so the council would recognise her; there wasn't much point in remaining incognito here anyway.

"Ah," the young man said, as though the blonde's response was as natural as any.

Clare sat down beside Teresa, and the three councilmen regarded her cagily. Teresa supposed it wasn't every day a 'Claymore' was joined at the hip with a little human girl. "Details," Teresa reminded them, placing her sword across the table.

The middle-aged and rather dishevelled woman sitting next to the man with the goatee cleared her throat and sat forward. "Claymore. It is a little known fact that this town is host to a… a…." Her voice lowered an octave and she leaned toward Teresa an inch more, "…a *youma*."

"We think it makes its home *outside* of this town," the third councilman, a gnarled elderly gentleman with wispy white hair, clarified with a glance at his female associate. His voice creaked as though made of the same old oak like his knobbly body seemed to be. "People go missing. One here, one there. Not often enough to alarm the populace-townsfolk think they just up and left this dying town-but we know better. We, that is, Adana here," he gestured toward the middle-aged woman, "have *seen* it."

"Fell creature," the young man remarked matter-of-factly and drew a brief sign in the air to the God of Rabona but Teresa noted he had formed it incorrectly.

"I- I followed it once… it ran east, into the woods there," Adana retold, eyes affixed to the surface of the table. "I daren't follow it further."

"If you could rid us of this scourge we would compensate you with as much as we can give," the elderly man implored. "We can only hope its destruction will help reinvigorate Deluthron."

A single youma. If it was hanging around on the outskirts of town it was no wonder Teresa hadn't detected it. A solitary demon wasn't much of a challenge, but at least it would be a swift, no-nonsense kill for easy money and shouldn't see her and Clare's stay in Deluthron prolonged any more than it had to be. At the very minimum it was something to do while the blacksmith completed the work on her shoulder armour and sword sheath.

"I'll return with proof of its demise," Teresa stated, standing up and retrieving her blade. Clare hurriedly stood up a second after her, looking up at her guardian intently for cues. Teresa peered out the corner of her eye at the girl and smiled lopsidedly, finding amusement in Clare's mimicking of her.

"The child goes with you?" the old councilman inquired, astonished.

"Mm," Teresa apathetically mumbled, rather tiring of Deluthron's council.

"Surely not!" Adana balked. "She could be *killed* by that- that *beast*!"

"As if a Claymore would care…" the goateed young man muttered under his breath, pretending to be engrossed with picking his nails.

"She should remain with us, where it's safe!" Adana exclaimed. "You can't-"

"She's safer with me than anywhere else in the world," Teresa cut in coldly.

"Inhuman…" the old man sighed, shaking his head.

Teresa frowned, his comment hurting her more than she liked. Maybe they were right. The heat of battle, no matter how brief or miniscule, was not a place for a young girl. Teresa was confident she could protect Clare, but better to take out all possibility of jeopardy by leaving her behind and out of harm's way. She wouldn't be gone long, really. The blonde warrior released a long breath. Clare wasn't going to like it.

"You stay here, and don't leave for anything," Teresa instructed Clare.

Clare stared up at her with big green doe eyes, but Teresa refused to look lest they capture her. "Teresa, no…" Clare whined, pained, and seized her arm.

Teresa sighed again. "I'll be back so fast you won't even notice I was gone," she assured her clingy companion.

"No…" Clare continued to lament, gripping Teresa's arm so tight that her leather armour squeaked.

"The quicker you let me go, the quicker I can come back," Teresa remarked coolly, although she didn't like separating from Clare anymore than Clare did.

Reluctantly Clare released her blonde benefactor's arm and stood there forlornly, her chin on her chest.

"We'll watch over her," Adana promised.

"Be good," Teresa teased, touching Clare on top of her head, and then made for the tavern's door. She hadn't been able to look at Clare even once the whole time, or she just *knew* she would've crumbled. Hearing her pleading had been bad enough. That girl had a hold on her, but it was to be imagined of kindred spirits. Clare certainly was just as attached to Teresa.

Teresa bounded out of town, leaping off ledges and awnings and rooftops, making all haste her youma-strengthened legs could muster. She missed Clare already.

* * *

The sun was starting to fall into twilight when Teresa stomped back into Deluthron's borders. The search in the woods for the youma had delivered nothing but frustration, and the only prize waiting for her in town now after wasting her time was her reunion with Clare. Perhaps the council's directions had been wrong, or the youma had moved on, but it definitely wasn't making a lair in the fringes of that forest. Teresa had even ventured deeper, her damnable sense of responsibility to handle the youma threat not permitting her to leave without giving the task her all, but even then she hadn't felt so much as a flicker of yoki.

Whatever. Teresa had tried. It couldn't be helped. All she wanted to do now was report her findings to the council and retrieve Clare, pick up her things from the blacksmith, and leave this town far, far behind. Deluthron was similar to a bog, miring travellers and slowly sucking them deeper into its entanglements until you suddenly realised how long you'd spent in this miserable backwater. Teresa wouldn't be surprised if she bumped into that wandering weapons merchant down the road. One thing was for sure, she and Clare were *not* spending the night here.

Teresa entered the Hare's Luck to see that its clientele had not blossomed in her absence, but rather diminished. That the council and Clare were among those gone set off an alarm in the warrior's head and a tremor in her heart.

The bartender was awake and off his stool and pouring himself a drink from his own stock when Teresa marched briskly up to the shabby bar. Another portly gentleman with thinning black hair and a sour face, he fit right in with the rest of Deluthron. "What happened to the town council and the girl that was with them?" Teresa demanded to know.

"Council? They was here, was they? Left then, I guess," the barman mumbled, concentrating on filling his mug with some foul, and no doubt watered down brew. "Don't recall no girl."

"Are you sure? What did you see?" Teresa pressed. Maybe he had seen no more than the backs of his eyelids, the useless lug.

"Hells lady, don't be bothering me with your problems," the barkeeper groaned, still not even glancing up. "Got enough prob-"

The claymore smashing his mug and half the neck of the booze bottle to smithereens shocked his drowsiness out of him, and roused the tavern's brooding patrons upright in their chairs. "Right now, my problems are *your* problems," Teresa crooned, propping her sword against her shoulder again. "So pay attention." This town and its inhabitants and their fantasy youma had her in a prickly temperament, but with Clare's disappearance she wasn't about to curb her violent impulses. It could just be benign, some misunderstanding, however Teresa had told Clare to remain in this rathole no matter what. Clare wouldn't disobey.

"Claymore?" the barkeeper croaked, at last realising his company. Honey-hued liquid spilt unheeded onto the bar from the broken bottle, the man's arm frozen in the act of pouring. "Look, I don't want no trouble!"

"The girl. The council," Teresa repeated, articulating every word.

"I saw no girl, okay? I saw nothing!" the barkeeper squealed, backing away and clutching the broken bottle to his chest.

Teresa looked over her shoulder at the Hare's scant customers, whom quickly ducked their heads at her silver glare. Were they scared of what they knew, or scared of her? Had the bartender seen Clare, or had he slept through everything? "I can sense if you're lying…" Teresa bluffed, turning back to stare at the barkeeper.

He quailed under the otherworldly look, leaning back and lifting higher on his haunches. "Th-The council would know…" he wheezed.

"Where are they? Do they have a building of their own in town?"

The bartender shook his head fearfully, unable to tear his eyes away from the blonde half-youma before him. If this really turned out to be all for nothing, one big overreaction, Teresa would spank that bottom of Clare's red for making her do this.

The armour and weapons store shopkeeper had known where to find the council; at least known where to run to tell them of Teresa's appearance in town and then relay their job offer. Besides, Teresa didn't think the barman could take much further terrorising. But she'd be back to do it nevertheless if she had to.

Teresa ran to the arms and armour shop, bursting through its door so hard she almost cracked the wood. Its owner was present behind the counter, smiling slickly at her and rubbing his hands together. "Welcome back!" he said gaily.

"Where is the council?" the woman snapped as she approached the counter, not in the mood for his toadying.

"Ahh… not with you?" he said tentatively. "You met them, yes?"

"*Look*, the girl I travelled here with is…." A glance; and Teresa frowned, and then scowled as though face to face with a bitter foe. She had caught it out of the corner of her eye-the object that laid bare their deception. The council, the tavern, the weapon and armour store; possibly the whole town. On the counter, set on display so audaciously, was the stiletto she had bought Clare. There was no mistaking it; Teresa knew her weapons, had handled this one; it was one and the same-the stiletto Clare had eventually stuck in her belt.

"Where is she?" Teresa spat coldly, as grim-faced as her tone. She could feel her grip on her claymore tightening.

"Why, whatever do you-" Teresa held up the accusing stiletto, "-mean." The shopkeeper's voice was strangled at the end. "N-New stock. You like…?"

"They took her," Georuf interrupted, lumbering in from the smithy.

"Where?" Teresa said, her voice unnaturally-dangerously-steady.

"To the youma. With the others."

"Don't-!" the shopkeeper began to sneer through his yellowed teeth, until Teresa slapped the flat of her giant blade violently against the counter, rattling knives and daggers, some bouncing onto the floor.

"We have an arrangement with it," Georuf went on, his head low. "It protects this town, and in payment we… feed it."

"Feed…" Teresa repeated, the horror coming to light. _Clare_.

"It was that or be destroyed!" the shopkeeper suddenly yelled, enraged. "You have no right to judge, witch! We're not like you!"

"The council chooses them. The ones to go," the blacksmith continued, ignoring the other man's outburst. "It was formed just for that charge. Your girl, she was taken in place of another; outsiders are used to spare our own where and when we can."

"Why didn't you call my sisters? Why wasn't I directed to its true den?" Teresa said, but her mind was elsewhere. _There's only one question to ask-*where*. There is no time for anything else_. _Go. Go!_

"There was talk; at the beginning; talk…. But we were afraid we would be killed before the Claymore arrived. The youma warned us not to call them. It said it would protect us from bandits and raiders; those that would do harm to us." Georuf sighed heavily. "I don't remember when it ever did. I don't know why you were led astray, either. Fear, maybe… that you'd fail… and we'd pay the price for it."

"Fools. All you did was condemn this town to a slower death, but certain death to be sure," Teresa said sternly, disgusted. "I don't have time to bandy words with selfish cowards and murderers. Tell me where Clare is!"

"North-west; there's a slope in the rocks that runs into a crevice. There's a cave down there." Georuf hefted a bundle of leather and shiny metal. "Take these. It was an honour. Beat mending pots and pans."

Teresa snatched the items from his meaty grasp. It was her pauldron and claymore sheath, split up and reworked and fitted with leather straps and buckles. She quickly slipped into the black harnesses and fastened the belts; settling the pauldron over her right shoulder and the small circular sheath on her back. It was good work; the fit was perfect, but there were no thanks on her lips.

"We were afraid," Georuf said again, shamed. However if he sought salvation from Teresa, he'd find none.

"Pray to your Gods. If she's dead, you're all dead," was Teresa's grim promise. "This entire town is dead."

The blonde youma-slayer sheathed her claymore, the long thick blade rasping against the oiled steel.

* * *

The crevice and the cave buried in its insides didn't take long to unearth, especially with the urgency Teresa moved and searched, the waxing yoki guiding her. Caution was thrown to the wind as the woman scrambled down the slope; sparks from her boots and loose rocks flying with her rapid descent; and leapt into the murky grotto. She didn't think about being too late. She didn't think about what the youma might do to Clare. Teresa's every thought was dedicated to *finding* the girl, and cutting a path through anything that stood between them.

Teresa's silver gaze adjusted immediately to the cave's darkness, her demonic inheritance gifting her flawless night vision. From a small entrance passageway the cave opened into a massive cavern, its roof dripping with stalactites. The floor's rock formations shared the space with ripped cloth and *bones*; hundreds and hundreds of bones; cracked arm and leg bones, chipped pelvic bones, broken ribs, severed spines, split skulls-human bones. The vast number of remains before Teresa was for battlefields, not for a cave outside a small town. So many had died here, here in this *tomb*. This was *years* worth of murder.

Today's sacrifices were piled into a natural depression layered with hay off to one side, hands and feet bound with leather cords. There was four in total; all young and strong; the future of Deluthron thrown to the proverbial wolves-to the very real demon. But Teresa was only interested in one of the fresh faces, the one that wasn't from Deluthron.

"Clare…" Teresa breathed. She was alive. The knot that had been slowly tightening in the woman's stomach, a knot she hadn't even been aware of, suddenly unravelled, releasing pure relief throughout her body.

Clare had been left long enough in the gloom for her eyes to become accustomed to it, since the girl perked up when her swordswoman guardian emerged from the entry tunnel into her subterranean prison. She kept quiet however; at least didn't raise her voice to call to Teresa. They were not alone, and it wasn't the cowering townsfolk beside her that kept Clare silent.

The yoki's source was here, and this close it felt formidable for a lone pure bred youma. But a single glance was plenty for *anyone* to know, let alone Teresa, that the beast that made its lair in this cave was mighty indeed.

A hulking brute, it sat at the end of the cave, a rendering of a nest constructed of discarded bones surrounding its bulk. Its arms mimicked the girth of tree-trunks, with boulders for fists, and its belly bulged grossly from the bountiful years it had seen at Deluthron's bloody expense. However, as a price to its coddling racket its legs had shrivelled from disuse, twigs compared to its other limbs, and Teresa wondered with all that fat if it could move at all, or if this cave was more its prison than anyone else's.

Teresa drew her claymore, the ringing of steel echoing off the craggy walls. It would be the youma's grave-like it was so many humans'-once she was through with it.

"Hunter… Claymore…" the obese youma thundered; its voice as rough as the stone around it. "In stumbling upon this place, you have stumbled upon death." It rubbed its tummy, and its tongue slurped out over its lips. It was only then that Teresa noticed the fresh blood smeared across them and the gore caught between its teeth. Consequently the warrior wondered how many kidnapped townsfolk had originally been with Clare before she came.

"We didn't think a Claymore would be so attached to a human that you'd care to come looking for one." Teresa recognised the voice behind her; it was human, although she knew now it was a parody of humanity.

"We imagined you'd go on your merry way without her, figuring she simply ran off, as children often do."

"A mistake on our part; I suppose your kind truly is different from ours. Too… human."

"Now you have to die. We have learned to suppress our yoki down to nothing to evade your kind; with your death our secret-and our *feast*-will be preserved. Your remains will be found miles from here; no other Claymore will come."

"I wonder if you'll taste as human as you act…."

Teresa smiled faintly, her head dipping. "You had it wrong before. Your mistake was taking the girl to begin with."

Unearthly howls tore through the air behind Teresa, joined by fabric tearing as seams burst and the crack of bones as bodies grew to monstrous proportions. She could feel their yoki now, all three auras-they were weak.

Teresa hurled her body around, leading with her sword's edge. It did as it was crafted for-it cut, cleaving through the waist of the creature that had been the old withered councilman. As the top half of his body fell to a wet splat on the ground, the youma that Teresa had recognised as the council's young man leapt at her, fangs bared and talons reaching. All he caught was the end of her claymore as she speared it though his sternum.

"Kill the human girl!" the huge, pampered youma bellowed, beholding the quiet ferocity of Teresa's attack.

The transformed female councilman shrieked and dashed toward the shallow sacrificial pit, prompting terrified screams from the townspeople restrained there. But Clare's voice didn't add to the cacophony-Clare possessed a stouter spirit, and moreover she knew Teresa like her fellow captives did not.

Her blade pinned in the guts of a youma, Teresa instead whipped around, Clare's stiletto spinning from her fingertips. It found its mark in the back of the female youma's skull, crumbling her unholy form in a haphazard heap a metre from the pit.

The remaining youma councilman snarled and snapped his jaws on Teresa's blade, his mangled organs still pumping life into his infernal body. The blonde woman twisted her claymore and kicked the creature in the chest, his freedom granted with a shower of purple blood issuing from his unplugged wound. But before he could even find his footing steel had found his neck, and had removed his head from his shoulders.

The overweight youma roared its rage, the cavern shaking and causing a rain of dust and stones. Its fists slammed into the ground, rocking the cave further until stalactites broke off and shattered around Teresa and Clare and the other humans, and with its enormous arms it lifted its bulk out of its nest and stampeded toward the youma slayer on knuckles that crunched bones to powder, dragging dead legs along after it.

The youma's yoki was powerful, but it read like a signpost, and Teresa followed it like one. The woman was eerily calm as the titan charged her, jumping into the air at the last possible instant when its two fists were brought down where she had been standing. Her leap placed her on the monster's left arm, so thick she suspected she didn't actually need her demonic senses to aid her balance. In a blur she bolted up the limb and then darted sidelong off it, slashing her sword across her enemy's face before she landed.

The youma emitted agonised howls, and for good reason; its eyes were nothing more than holes that cried blood. It lashed out furiously, flailing everywhere *but* where Teresa ducked and dived as though waltzing lazily, its fists smashing chucks of rock loose wherever they struck. The cave's floor quaked and its ceiling shuddered, and Teresa worried the youma would bring the whole place down on everyone's heads.

Spurred on by concern for Clare, Teresa threw herself into the offensive again-the next time the youma's arm was hammered into the ground she delivered an overhead chop with her claymore to halve its thrashing. The arm was riddled with solid muscle, but flesh was no match for metal; it was hacked away like anyone else's.

As the demon reeled from its latest torture, Teresa flashed across its path, opening its belly as she passed. Its stomach contents slopped onto the cave's floor; chewed up and disintegrating human organs mixed with bile; followed by fat ropes of blood-soaked intestine that belonged to the creature itself. The youma doubled over, its single surviving arm holding it up from complete collapse, but its head had sank within height of Teresa's sword.

Her claymore hummed through the darkness, particles of blood flying off the blade, and then scraped into its sheath. The youma had ceased its pants and roars.

Teresa walked over to Clare as the creature's giant head slipped from its neck and its huge girth flattened against the ground, a trouble for Deluthron no more. She knelt down to the girl, quickly inspecting her with her gaze to see if she was harmed in any way, but she wasn't.

Teresa breathed deeply. She wasn't.

"Teresa!" Clare softly cried, pressing her slender frame against her saviour's body as best she could, bound as she was. Somehow she mustered a lot of warmth and contact nonetheless.

Teresa laid her hands on Clare's shoulders and smiled down at her. There was nothing needed to be said.

* * *

Teresa walked back into Deluthron holding Clare's hand in one hand and a bundled rag scrunched into a makeshift sack in the other. The sack's bottom was sodden and dripped a trail of dark liquid into the earth, marking their path from the cave to the town. Three people shadowed the pair, two young boys and one young girl all dirty and shaken but in the prime of their lives, and free to continue those lives. The two others of their number whose fate hadn't seen them escape the cave had been left where they lay, their hollowed out carcasses cast aside as dregs. If anyone cared they could be retrieved and given proper burial, as with the bones of others left in the youma's den, but care seemed a rare commodity in Deluthron.

Teresa's slow march brought her to the marketplace in the town's centre, where shocked people gave the party a wide berth. One of the young boys behind Teresa and Clare suddenly ran past them, greeted by the open arms and teary face of a parent, his mother probably, who cried his name over and over again. But the girl and other boy were sluggish in rejoining their families when they spotted them, their feet scuffing the ground and their shoulders hunched; families that likely had been willing to give them up to a grisly end. They rejoined them anyway; they had nowhere else to go.

All of a sudden Teresa stopped and threw out her arm, unfolding the cloth and letting what was inside roll free. Four heads, one much larger than the others, bounced down the street, raising appalled gasps and cries as they passed, spattering blood.

She could have punished them all. She could have been the avenger for those innocent dead sentenced to be a youma's meal. By all accounts the three weaker youma had killed the original town council and masqueraded as the deceased long ago, but it was Deluthron's people who had consented to their butchery year in, year out. Teresa knew well how evil and unsympathetic humans could be, even before she had slain those bandits that had razed a town and hurt and threatened Clare. She had never thought much of the humans she had fought for; helpless beings, so quick to hurt and sin.

But the shame in the eyes that would not meet hers was ample punishment for the populace of Deluthron. The people of this town were aware of their guilt, and would live with it. Teresa had snuffed out the source of Deluthron's corruption, but the disease in the town would last months yet, maybe years. It would take a long time and much penance for this small township to be cured, if it could be at all. However, the *potential* was there. And Teresa didn't want to make a habit out of deliberately interfering in purely human affairs.

The woman squeezed Clare's hand. Unless she had to.

Teresa let the breeze take the blood-drenched rag from her grasp, and turned back the way she and Clare had come, finally leaving Deluthron and its woes behind, and glad for it. If the people had thought to offer her gold as a reward for claiming the youma heads they could keep it, not that Teresa could stomach accepting it. In the beginning she had hunted the youma with a mercenary mindset, but in the end it had been solely for Clare. That she had rid the town of the youma's grip and saved a few of their people in the process was an unintended bonus for Deluthron. All things considered, it was a town worth forgetting.

"Teresa."

Teresa looked at Clare and saw the girl holding up the water bag to her again, the persistent little thing. The blonde couldn't help the smile that arose to beam down upon Clare's impish face. The dirt road led north to new towns and villages, and if the rumours were true, to a war. But wherever Teresa travelled, home travelled with her.

There were still some humans worth fighting for.

* * *

The End… for now.

Author's ramblings:

Teresa's new outfit is sort of in the vein of Irene's, except showing less skin and is less… BDSM-queeny. I like those Amazonian style mini-skirt thingies, so I had her have one. Plus Teresa in tight black leather? *Drools*

Town names were pulled out of nowhere, and I'm sorry if they suck or were actually mentioned in the manga (that town where the Claymore attacked Teresa, for one). I hate coming up with place names!

Teresa and Clare will return!


	3. Duty

Duty - By Kirika

* * *

Teresa and Clare are back!

- Kirika

* * *

The road had been long, but while being chased when did it not seem so? Teresa was accustomed to long, hard roads from her time as a youma slayer; the monotony, the perpetual slog, the bad weather that seemed to centre on you, and the dirt. That very demonic heritage saw her escape from the debilitating fatigue that compounded for human travellers mile after mile, slowing them down until they were forced to stop and seek rest and shelter, however when she was coupled with a human herself, the boon was restrained. Clare had tried her best; pushed longer than what Teresa would expect of such a frail thing; but ultimately her body gave out some vast distance back. Teresa had stopped when she could to let her companion recover her legs, yet still the pace had been too slow for the woman's liking. Any sisters behind them would not be held up by human shortcomings. Fortunately Clare fit well in Teresa's arms.

Clare slept like a babe, and Teresa clutched the girl like one to her chest while she called upon her uncanny stamina to journey onwards for the both of them, with each step careful not to jostle what was anything but a burden. She could do nothing about the noise the other travellers on the road made though, and the closer she and Clare got to Karesia's border the more people they encountered coming from and *going* to the city states, the latter in spite of the war. The way north was not a lonely one in these times; Teresa couldn't recall when someone else wasn't within sight, pounding the dried mud as she did.

Beleaguered refugees with their belongings on their backs passed Teresa heading away from Karesia, the lucky few instead with wagons or carts for their loads and themselves, pulled by starved oxen or a wizened donkey that should have been put out to pasture or out of its misery long ago. Most of the refugees sported injuries; bloody bandages covered many a wound, and crutches dug into the dirt as often as feet. If not anything else, their empty faces said it all. They had seen the horrors of war and it had left its scars-deeper than the physical.

Not everyone who travelled out of Karesia was a battered survivor of some siege or battle. Ordinary citizens not the worse for wear who had opted to flee the war before it came to their door also dotted the road, no doubt reassured of their decision by the wretched refugees beside them.

While everyone leaving Karesia seemed to have a common reason-the fear of death-so did those heading towards it, but far different. War, for all its tragedies and atrocities, was a profitable enterprise for those who knew how to exploit it. Rich, shrewd merchants of questionable ethics led caravan trains of goods from suddenly rare luxuries to always needed arms and armour into the borderland, whilst the poorer majority, no less astute, drove their more humble transports and wares towards Karesia, also hoping for a cut of blood money. Then there were the soldiers without a country; the mercenaries, the swords for hire; their only loyalty to currency. In a steady stream they came, most on foot but some on horseback, the weapons and armour they bore as diverse as each warrior, but every one of them with fortune on their mind. Whether they would fight for Karesia or ultimately end up with her enemy would depend on which side paid the most.

Even Teresa was not exempt from the profiteer's motivation. She hoped to replenish her and Clare's pitiable funds here, though they would use the war mostly as a cloak, perhaps in the same vein as other wanted criminals might be doing. Yet despite being hounded and forced into hiding, a death sentence over her head, Teresa didn't feel like a criminal. She felt freer than she'd ever been.

It took another hour to reach the gate of Graadenhold, a huge, walled city just inside the border of Karesia that saw much foreign trade with southern provinces. Teresa had walked its streets once in the past, during a contract to rid the city of a youma infestation. Well, not so much walked its streets, but walked *under* them-a sizable youma population had infiltrated the sewer tunnels and had been using them to strike at citizens in the dead of night. The Watch had thought it was a serial killer or an increase in footpad activity until a watchman had seen one of the creatures feast with his own eyes. Needless to say when Teresa had left Graadenhold, the murders declined and an even fouler smell began wafting from its sewers.

The gate guards waved Teresa and Clare through without a second glance, no doubt tired of the constant influx of new faces and happy to quickly label the dark clad woman another soldier of fortune while ignoring the comatose girl she cradled. Still, Teresa kept her head down and her hood low over her eyes. Regardless of the guards' apathy, the appearance of a 'Claymore' would draw looks and unwanted gossip, even alongside the hubbub about the war-the possible presence of youma in their city was nothing to dismiss, and Graadenhold was familiar with the damage demonkind could do. Moreover, in a city as alive as this one, the gossip would spread like wildfire.

The voices filling Graadenhold combined into one never-ending chorus of life, a din Teresa was impressed Clare could sleep through. The markets were packed places where storekeepers shouted the merits of their wares and haggled with equally loud patrons; taverns and inns were bustling, the frivolities and jovial drinkers overflowing out into the streets; every corner had some performer and a crowd to wow at his or her routine, from jugglers to fire blowers, musicians plying nearly every instrument in the known world, to troupes of actors using the street as their stage. Even the alleys were crammed, the shifty sort and those who should have known better hemmed around tumbling dice or a stack of cards, but always accompanied by a pile of currency-illegal gambling the Watch had no chance of stopping, so didn't try. The people of Graadenhold were the most human Teresa had ever seen, however it was not how she remembered them from her last visit.

War had that way with people. It excited them, pushed them, lowered their inhibitions and kept the revelry at fever pitch. After all, your demise or the annihilation of your way of life could come at any moment. Better to live each day as joyously as possible and to its most, leaving nothing unsaid or anything unfinished. All the border towns not yet exposed to the real effects of war were probably like Graadenhold. The people in fine spirits, spinning tales of battles waged elsewhere in the land, and likely only those that had been won-battles too far to hurt them, but not far enough away that they couldn't be thrilled by them. It would be like this until the war encroached upon their city. Then it would seem all too real, the giddy apprehension becoming true fear, where the thought of surviving through the hour would be more of a concern than making the most of living each day. Humans always had to learn the hard way.

The thriving inns looked tempting, each new hospitable façade Teresa walked past the more she was aware of Clare lifeless in her arms. The girl needed a proper bed. They'd slept rough and lived off the land whenever they could, but it wasn't right to subject a young girl like Clare to that so often. A proper bed and a roof over one's head cost money however, money Teresa no longer had. She wasn't sure she could even afford a straw cot in a stable. The blonde supposed her arms were at least better than the hard earth, but Clare would have to eat eventually. Graadenhold would provide. Graadenhold and Teresa's claymore.

In the most travelled locales of the city-the markets, the city centre, outside popular taverns and dens of ill repute-the Karesian military had set up recruitment posts with an officer behind the rickety wooden stands bellowing the virtues of service-steady food and pay, a guaranteed bed every night, and all necessary equipment supplied by the Lords of Karesia. No mention of the likely grisly death that would cut short all those benefits, of course. Nevertheless, there were queues at most of the posts; hapless folk who were probably very conscious of the risks, but had nothing else going for them-the poor, the desperate, the lost. And the rest of the people filling the cracks were the foolish or, in the case of the recruitment posts outside the drinking establishments, the drunk. Those citizens who had money to ride out the war would never see a battle, unless it came to them or conscription demanded them. If conscription did occur, it would still take a long time to reach the rich. There were plenty of ordinary citizens to die in their place first. It reminded Teresa of the organisation-sisters did the dying, while the higher ups like Rubel dictated how and when they would. It had never really bothered Teresa while she was in their service. Dying wasn't her thing.

The recruitment posts were close to what Teresa sought, but would not feed Clare. Teresa was not a citizen of Karesia. Besides, a human uniform was sure to chafe on her. She wondered what Clare would think of her dressed up as an officer, in polished silver armour and finely stitched livery.

Teresa smiled softly. Clare would probably think her quite impressive.

The mercenary recruitment posts had their place in the popular spots of the city, yet they were grim affairs compared to the citizens' sign up posts. Nobody bellowed the merits of being a hired blade here, nor were any arms or armour offered by the army. Those who lined up knew their business and arrived equipped for it; those that didn't on either count would likely not live to line up again. Most of them looked like criminals; hardened men and women bearing scars and cruel looks. Teresa joined them.

"Teresa."

Teresa picked up Clare's small voice through the countless, much louder, other voices around her; her ears attuned to the pure and innocent timbre. She smiled down at the girl still in her grasp, her silver gaze glimmering inside the shadow of her hood, the woman's telling eyes only for Clare. "We've arrived," Teresa said.

Clare blinked languidly and rubbed at a crusty eye. "I'm sorry… I couldn't keep up with you." Teresa wondered if the girl remembered staggering into her, all but asleep on her feet, before being swept off the road into the warrior's arms. "You can put me down now."

Teresa's eyes twinkled as her smile almost touched them, nothing to do with the silver in them this time. "You're not heavy."

Clare smiled contentedly and curled up a little bit more, pressing against Teresa's chest. Being in the care of youma had broken her body, but had not diminished her human spirit. Teresa saw more and more of the latter every day. She altogether admired it and was fascinated by it. Human beings had been a small step above cattle in Teresa's opinion; a small step above what youma must think of them. She had protected them because that was why she had existed, no other reason. It was difficult to imagine her having been one, so long, long ago now. Frail and pathetic, dishonourable and disingenuous. But there was worth in Clare. Teresa wanted to keep it, *her*, close; she *wanted* to protect it. Clare was so very human; its best qualities; and Teresa wouldn't change any of it. Strength or weakness, Clare made both beautiful.

"Name," coughed a gruff voice.

Teresa looked up to see she had progressed to the front of the line and was before the recruitment officer-a sergeant, judging by the small red plume sprouting from his helmet where it rested on the table he sat behind. Bandaged and bloodied, it was easy to tell why he had pulled this duty.

"Teresa," Teresa said. Her name was one of the few things she had, and a pseudonym wouldn't have fooled the organisation anyway. As long as she wasn't recognised as a 'Claymore', she could blend in here. Except her eyes. There was nothing she could do about those. There were concoctions to hide her nature, but she was no alchemist, and only the organisation knew the formulas. What other human would need them, after all? At least few questions were asked of mercenaries; onlookers would probably decide she was disfigured, or had a bounty on her head, and think nothing more of it. Ironic that they would be right.

The sergeant dipped a ratty quill in a bottle of ink beside his helmet, and wrote the blonde's name on a piece of parchment that bore many other names; probably the other mercenaries that had signed up before her. At the top of the page was the kite-shaped crest of Karesia, inside depicting a stone tower surrounded by starry sky. The sergeant sported it on the chest of his rust-coloured tabard as well, as did the other two soldiers sitting on stools nearby, nursing their own collection of war wounds. Symbols were important to organisations. They tricked the wearer into thinking that they were part of something greater than themselves; that they belonged and should do as the others who looked like them. Follow, obey, and never question. Never do the unexpected. Right up to the moment it led to certain death. They inhibited your individuality, however that was the idea. The ruse wasn't limited to humans; even youma slayers were deluded so. But then they were once human too, and taken young.

"Food for one is supplied," the sergeant said, not looking up from his paperwork. "We won't pay to feed the waif."

"As long as you pay me," Teresa replied. Fortunately the warrior's demonic inheritance decreased her need for human forms of sustenance, which would leave Clare with most of the food to gorge upon; something Teresa found herself growing to vicariously enjoy the sight of.

"For as long as you keep breathing," the sergeant chortled, stamping a small red seal beside Teresa's name. "You march within the hour. Next!"

* * *

The air got colder the deeper into Karesian territory Teresa and Clare travelled, and the ground got harder; the earth frozen beneath their feet. Typical northern climate. Its rigors didn't bother Teresa, but she harboured quiet concern for Clare. The girl needed more meat on her bones. Moreover, she still hadn't eaten or rested to Teresa's satisfaction.

Clare walked beside Teresa, picking a path through the scrubs dusted with frost that peppered the otherwise barren landscape. The girl had garnered looks from the rest of the mercenary company; twenty-one strong Teresa had counted, including herself and the Karesian soldier escorting them; though no one had spoken a word out of turn. Yet. The blonde was sure they viewed Clare as baggage, or even prey. Teresa would have to keep her close, lest the wandering eyes of some of the more rugged and seedy men cause a wandering of hands, too. Human males had difficulty controlling themselves in that aspect of their nature. She had heard rumour that that was why there were only female youma slayers; however she hadn't cared to substantiate it. It had base in only rumour, after all.

It anyone was baggage, it was the peasant girl sharing quiet giggles with her male companion, no more than a boy himself. She was dressed as a soldier of fortune only if you considered the sword at her hip, or else she would be better suited on a farm with her long skirt and poorly stitched blouse. Teresa was amazed the Karesian military had signed her on; they must really be desperate for soldiers, or merely paying her half wage. The boy was slightly better equipped with old and cracked leather armour that needed an oiling or to be discarded entirely, but inexperience exuded from his every clumsy movement and gesture. He was no fighter; Teresa wondered if he even knew which end of his sword to hold. If there was combat ahead, she didn't think either would make a difference, or survive. That was unless they became prey to the rest of the mercenary company before then.

Teresa laid her hand on Clare's head and turned it forwards, away from the small white flowers she was looking at that had somehow held onto life in this inhospitable land. "Look," Teresa said.

"Behold, Kazaar," one of the mercenaries murmured under his breath, the dour fanfare apt for the sight ahead.

Smoke trails funnelled out from the city, thick and black streaks smudging out the grey sky. The massive wall that surrounded Kazaar protected it no more; it had been smashed apart and was crumbling in places, the gouged bricks probably the aftermath of catapults or trebuchets delivering their payloads. Arrows speckled the ground the nearer the mercenary company got to the city, the thorny patches at their thickest at the splintered remains of the gates, which had been battered down.

"We're too late?" Clare worried softly.

A mercenary nearby-a scruffy man in furs with a bushy black beard and an axe on his back-laughed raucously and spat on the ground. "Try a month too late, girly. Kazaar was taken by Alphonse, and most of its population met a grisly end. No one's left to save. We're here to pick at the remains, like the birdies."

"Birds?" Clare said, looking up at Teresa for an explanation. But stepping through the gate provided one better than mere words could, although it wasn't a sight for young eyes.

The cawing of buzzards in their rapture filled the air as they pecked and feasted at their leisure on the corpses that littered the city streets. Karesian soldiers toiled to pile the bodies up and put them to the torch, rags tied around their faces for the smell. The dead were carries of disease, for humans anyway, and their presence was generally unnerving to the living. Teresa at least agreed about the smell. It was foul. The majority of the bodies were in an advanced state of decay; all but down to their bones. Some were, thanks to the birds having had their fill.

The bodies weren't just soldiers, but townsfolk most of all. Men, women and children of Kazaar slaughtered. Alphonse had given no quarter, not even to the young and delicate. By what Teresa could make out from the rotting wounds, Alphonse's army had suffered from a severe bloodlust. She hadn't known humans were capable of such violent fury. Maybe the buzzards made it look worse, but many of victims seemed maimed and disembowelled, or simply ripped to pieces.

Clare frowned at the carnage, but eerily for a young human girl seemed undisturbed by it. She had probably seen too much of it already, thanks to the hospitality of youma. They had made her numb. They had made her numb to many things.

"Looks like someone beat us to it, lads!" one of the mercenaries joked, raising harsh laughter from some of the other hired blades and fierce glares from everyone else, especially the Karesian soldiers on body detail.

"Shut up, scum," the Karesian escort snapped, "and wait here." He walked over to what had been Kazaar's main gate Watch house and disappeared inside for a few moments. When he re-emerged, he was not alone.

The man with him was obviously of higher rank. The ribbons sealed onto his only spaulder on his right shoulder gave him an air of authority not diminished by the heavy injuries he bore. His left eye was covered by a bandage that went around his head and his arm was in a sling, plus he even walked with a limp that Teresa could tell he was doing his best to fight. She suspected more wounds were hidden under his uniform.

"Captain," the escort said, nodding slightly and presenting the mercenaries he'd brought. The captain was quite young; Teresa wasn't too familiar with human military structure, but logic dictated that it took an experienced individual to achieve a command, and that experience usually came with wrinkles and grey hairs for humans. The captain must have been exceptional. Or lucky. Or the war had seen Karesia run out of commanders with wrinkles and grey hairs.

"I am Captain Sabatte," the man said. He had a lean build with unkempt black hair and stubble over his face and a dark circle under his good eye. The duress of the city showed on him. "Formerly of the 58th Halberd Company. Now I'm here." He cleared his throat; Teresa guessed he wasn't pleased with his reassignment. "Alphonse has retreated from Kazaar, leaving it to us to clean up the mess they left. Kazaar has become a lawless place… but we'll change that. For now, get some food and rest. Tomorrow at first light you'll be briefed on your duties." Sabatte turned to go.

"What about our pay?" someone called.

"You'll get your pay at the end of each day," Sabatte answered. "Starting *tomorrow*. One more thing-stay inside the barricades. I don't want to have to go to the trouble of replacing any of you so soon. You can sleep in any building we're not using. Mess is in the old tavern."

With that the captain marched off back into the Watch house, and their escort was no longer that, having wandered off to spark up a conversation with his fellow soldiers. Teresa, Clare, and the rest of the mercenaries had been given free reign of the outpost. They would be watched, though. Hired blades weren't known for their trustworthiness.

"Let's get some food," Clare announced, glancing about for the tavern.

Teresa smiled at her enthusiasm, albeit subdued as it was, as was her nature. "Pick something tasty for us," she said. That however was probably a tall order for a soldier's makeshift mess hall. They'd be lucky to get a taste of meat that wasn't from furry four-legged vermin.

Clare spotted the tavern and trotted off, Teresa following close a few steps behind. The dangers outside the outpost could wait for tomorrow; inside the barricades presented enough.

* * *

Inside the rundown tavern some soldiers were already dining; each gave Teresa and the other newcomers sour appraisals before going back to their meagre meals. It was deathly quiet but for the occasional clink of cutlery on dishware and stank of whatever swill was being served-just awful. Bloodstains too sloppily scrubbed had been allowed to soak into the wooden floorboards, the ruddy patches marking where former patrons or the tavern's owners themselves had met Alphonse's wrath. The walls as well had seen gore splatter against it, but even less attention had been given to those. Teresa supposed no human relished mopping up the blood of their own kind. It made for grim surroundings and a bitter mood, however.

"Go get us something to eat," Teresa said to Clare, bending down to her ear.

Clare nodded and ran up to the soldier stirring a pot on the bar, wearing a dirty apron that was more brown than white, while Teresa claimed one of the tables away from the rest for herself and the girl. The other mercenaries picked at the makeshift mess hall's offerings, cursing at the selection and quality. Teresa watched them carefully from underneath her hood.

"Whelp!" a soldier snarled, seizing Clare's wrist as she tried to get a bowl of the slop that was being served. He pulled the girl roughly around to face him. "This isn't for you!"

"Leave her be!" the peasant girl yelled nearby, prying herself from the arm of her blanching male companion to wheel on the soldier. "We're meant to be helping people!"

"Shut up, woman!" the soldier spat back. "Control your whore, boy, unless *I* do it for you!" He grinned lascivious and looked to his comrades for support and approval, which was fulfilled with hearty chuckles.

"Merick!" the woman hissed at the boy accompanying her, but he merely looked away with a frustrated set to his jaw and his hand tight around the handle of his sword.

"Now you," the belligerent soldier said, dismissing the couple and returning to bullying just Clare, "off with you, before-"

Teresa's iron grip on *his* wrist wrenched the soldier partly off his feet as she brought him face to face with her. "She's with me. Unhand her. Now. And you can keep the hand."

The soldier gaped at Teresa in shock for a moment, before his face was gripped by a furious mask once more. "We don't have enough to feed your whole damn family! We feed those who earn their keep!"

"I'll earn it for the both of us," Teresa whispered darkly. "I'm going to break your wrist now."

The bone cracked under the pressure Teresa suddenly exerted on it, and the soldier screamed, his knees giving way and letting go of Clare, and jolting the others in the room who had been staring, stunned, to leap from their chairs and draw their swords.

"He still has his sword arm," Teresa said calmly, looking over her shoulder at the Karesian soldiers as Clare sought protection in the folds of her cloak. "Don't make this into more."

The soldiers seemed to see sense, or perhaps weren't as loyal to their friend whimpering on the floor as he himself believed. They slowly sheathed their swords and sat down, all the time gazing at Teresa as though she would spring at them at any second. A mercenary laughed dryly from the sidelines, breaking the tension, and everybody appeared to forget about the crying soldier with the broken wrist and instead focused on food and eating it.

"Did he hurt you?" Teresa asked.

Clare shook her head but rubbed at her wrist. She looked at the soldier on kitchen duty, who quickly filled a bowl with soup from his pot and pushed it across the bar towards her. "I'll finish getting food," Clare said.

Teresa touched Clare behind her head briefly, letting the girl's hair sift through her fingers, before going back to the table. Always eager to do her part; and Teresa indulged Clare so. But the blonde was never far and ready to step in when she had to.

When Clare joined Teresa, she carried in her arms quite a pile of food and two cups of slightly murky water. Teresa supposed no one would complain now. She took an undersized bruised red apple from the little haul and gingerly sank her teeth into it, fearing parasite infestation or rot, while Clare greedily slurped up the soup and ripped a bite out of a chunk of hard bread. The girl then grabbed a bit of cheese and picked the mould off, before taking a big bite from that too. She had a healthy appetite, even for that ugly slop and half rotten food. Hunger probably made it all taste like ambrosia.

"Can we sit here? All the other tables are full."

Teresa looked up at the peasant girl and her companion-Merick, she believed he was called-then panned her gaze to the rest of the mess hall. It was indeed filling up; dusk had probably fallen outside. It had taken nearly the entire day to reach Kazaar from Graadenhold-it was no wonder Clare had gathered a feast for herself… and Teresa, of course.

Teresa sighed loudly. "I suppose."

The peasant girl smiled and eagerly sat down, putting her cracked plate holding a modest assortment of food on the table in front of her. Merick sat less enthusiastically, tentatively sliding his own plate on the table. He probably thought like the soldiers; that Teresa was highly strung and with the strength to make her very dangerous.

The peasant girl smoothed her hands over the ratty brown braid hanging down her left shoulder, although no amount of teasing would rein in all those flyaway hairs and ease the thick knots. "My name's Adaline. This is Merick. We're from Hestra. Well, a village near it."

"Teresa," Teresa said within another sigh after a couple of tense moments-at least for Adaline and Merick. "This is Clare." Clare glanced at the pair for a second then went back to eating.

"Oh, how pretty, just like the Goddesses of Love!" Adaline beamed at Teresa and then at Clare, and picked up some bread from her plate and started tearing at it. "We came here to make our fortune. Merick's always been good with the sword, and we just had to get out of Stoadwell and away from… from everything. Once we have enough money to settle down we'll give up this life and find a quiet spot just for us, get married, and-"

"I'm sure she doesn't care about all that, Adaline," Merick shushed, before taking a gulp of his ale. He winced afterwards; it must have been watered down with the cruddy water.

Adaline's face fell and she ate some bread, her spirit a little dampened. But just when Teresa thought they'd be dining in silence, she spoke up again. "Um, you're very protective of your daughter."

"She's not my daughter," Teresa said.

"Oh, I'm sorry. Your sister?"

Teresa smiled faintly. "No," she said, forcing an exaggerated sigh. "She's a stray I picked up somewhere."

Clare finally stopped eating and stared at Teresa, before the blonde woman smiled wider in mirth and lightly rubbed the top of her head, revealing that she was only jesting.

"Teresa," Clare muttered under her breath, then ate more cheese.

"Perhaps she shouldn't be here. It's dangerous…. The war…." Adaline said. "There are refugee camps that could help her."

"She's not from here," Teresa clarified.

"Adaline, it's rude to pry," Merick piped up. "They have our reasons for being in this gods forsaken place just as we do. It's not our business."

"Yes…. I'm sorry," Adaline said. "I didn't mean to bother you. It's just that yours was the first hospitality we've received in a long time."

"Adaline…" Merick chastised.

Silence now did descend on the table, and as soon as Adaline and Merick had finished their meals they said their goodbyes and left. Teresa wished she hadn't learned their names and heard a bit of their tale. She was disconnected from human life and its frequent loss, but she would notice Adaline and Merick's loss now when they eventually perished.

* * *

After eating and restocking their personal supplies under the begrudging hard glares of the soldiers, Teresa and Clare left the tavern and investigated the buildings around the outpost for a comfortable spot to spend the remainder of the night. Many were but rubble; victims of a stray boulder hurled by some war machine; and most of what was leftover were already claimed by the Karesian military or by other mercenaries that Teresa didn't feel relaxed sleeping next to, in particular with Clare. However they did find refuge in what looked like a bakery, or what had been one before Alphonse had battered down the gates to Kazaar. It smelled only of ash, now. The top floor had collapsed and resulted in a cave in at the back of the store, but what roof did stay intact was solid and complete. The front door worked and the walls were still erect, which would keep out some of the cold and wind.

Unfortunately Teresa and Clare hadn't been the first to find the disused bakery. A fire already crackled in the soot-stained fireplace when the pair arrived to probe the building's interior, and sitting nearby wrapped together in blankets and stoking it were their dinner companions, Adaline and Merick.

Teresa sighed. "Let's go," she said quietly to Clare.

"There's room," Adaline quickly invited, waving her hands at Merick so he would scoot over to make room at the fireplace.

Teresa stood in the doorway, mulling it over while Clare looked up at her inquisitively. She would have preferred being alone and considered finding somewhere else to that end, but it was late and she didn't want to drag poor Clare around in the dark any longer. Besides, the fire was already built and its heat was especially tempting against the chill at Teresa's back. She could only imagine what it felt like to the worn out and human Clare.

Teresa nodded. "Thank you," she said, and shut the door as Adaline burst out in smiles.

Teresa unsheathed her claymore. There was a rag tied just above the hilt, covering the unique symbol the organisation had given her; a marking that if she wasn't careful might strike a chord with some humans. The ringing metal freed from its sheath abruptly wiped the smile from the peasant girl's face and caused Merick to visibly tense up and inch his hand toward his sword lying close by. They both jumped as the youma slayer stabbed her blade into the floor, splintering floorboards before it hit dirt, and released it, the rigid steel too heavy to even wobble in place afterwards. Teresa didn't sleep on her back, like in the manner of humans. She slept as all sisters did-upright and on her guard, with her back against her claymore.

Clare rolled their blankets out beside the fireplace while Teresa sat down at her sword, gathering her cloak around her. With Adaline and Merick here she couldn't risk being without her cloak and hood, and thought better of removing her armour. The cold would be enough of an excuse to the former, and the latter behaviour was just the prudence of a warrior.

The peasant couple settled down on their half of the fire, cosying up together under their mound of ragged blankets. As Teresa was debating whether to sleep or spend the night on watch just in case, Clare, lying under her own blankets, turned to her.

"Teresa," she whispered.

Teresa's eyes shifted to the right towards Clare, to see the girl lift the blankets with one arm, making space for… her, presumably. Clare glanced at Adaline and Merick slumbering side by side and then back at Teresa, apparently expecting the same between them.

Teresa raised an eyebrow. To be close to another was a natural human need. A human need Teresa did not share. Or she thought she didn't. She'd never felt a physical draw to another being before, or the desire to remain close to a specific one-or felt anything else above indifference. But Teresa was looking at the exception, wasn't she. And denying Clare this human indulgence was not a sin she was about to commit. Teresa was not the same as the youma Clare had been held captive by. Teresa wasn't human, but she wasn't inhuman. Besides… the nights were cold in the north.

The blonde breathed softly and then undid the ties of her cloak, letting the hood and the rest of it slip from her head and shoulders, her revealed eyes shining like brushed steel in the glow from the fireplace. Next she undid the many buckles of her armour and stripped the leather off piece by piece. Sleeping on her back would be difficult enough without the hard rivets and buckles digging into her flesh. And if an attack did come, Teresa was not reliant on a thick skin of hide for victory.

Clare grunted, shimmying out of her own dusty leather apparel where she lay and pulling it off over her head, following Teresa's cue. Teresa watched her curiously and weighed stopping her, but decided to hold her tongue. Sleeping naked even by a fire the scrawny girl would be liable to catch a chill, but since Teresa would be joining her body heat to Clare's own under the blankets, there should be no danger.

Teresa stood bare with her back to Clare, the shadows painted by the fire dancing over the mark of her curse ravaging her stomach. It hadn't bothered Teresa before; no part of her ever had, nor had she cared who saw. Yet she hesitated. Then, took up her cloak and wrapped it around her midriff. Clare had seen the mutation before, but the idea of her seeing it again, or touching it, didn't sit well with Teresa. It was not silver eyes or blonde locks; there was nothing remotely human in it. It was the demon inside, caged within her body, always clawing to get out.

Teresa awkwardly got underneath the blankets next to Clare and lied down, unable to genuinely relax. It was a vulnerable position, and she could see only the worn and filthy ceiling. Her supernatural senses strained to make up for the dearth, searching for traces of yoki while her sharp ears listened for the slightest untoward noise. But except for wood splitting in the fire, the occasional bellowing of the wind picking up outside and the breathing of three humans, two slow and rhythmic, there was peace.

Clare immediately though delicately embraced Teresa, one leg sliding over the warrior's and an arm fitting under her breasts, while the girl's left cheek pressed against her shoulder. Clare's skin was cool and rough in spots from her hard young life, yet it felt… pleasant against Teresa's, and soon warmed. Behind the odours of dirt and ash Teresa could breathe in Clare's scent, so potent beside the blonde, so unique, so her. Teresa was beginning to understand the allure humans found in this intimacy. Moreover, she was realising that Clare needed it, as all humans did. Already Teresa could hear the slow and rhythmic breathing of three humans. It should be encouraged and indulged whenever sought. It was part of humanity at its best.

Teresa's last waking thought didn't contain a hint of surprise when she too swiftly fell into a deep and restful slumber.

* * *

"…Sweep through the city, street by street. Buildings too if you've cause for suspicion," Captain Sabatte announced in a strong voice that had to have carried across the entire outpost, standing straight with his healthy arm square on his hip, propped by a fist. The mercenaries were assembled before him at the makeshift barricade constructed with turned over carts, cracked barrels, and any other debris that could be easily-and by the looks of it, hastily-shifted. Teresa and Clare were there as well, the latter yawning often while the Karesian captain postured. It was early, the sky barely stained with reds and oranges. "Put any and all looters to the sword."

Teresa had roused when the peasant couple did, neither masters at breaking camp quietly, but rather like the naïve farming couple the blonde youma slayer believed them to be. From their too-loud whispering to their clumsy footsteps, the careless clink of pots and pans and yet more too-loud whispering; Teresa hadn't needed to open her eyes but merely listen as Merick and Adaline moved around, using the noise to gauge exactly where they were in the bakery. She was sure they had a good look at her face while she 'slept'-both had held their breath as they had carefully hovered over her-however with her telltale eyes closed there wasn't anything shocking for them to see. Teresa had kept them shut and remained perfectly still until Merick and Adaline had departed for breakfast at the tavern mess hall none the wiser.

"Enemy stragglers or wounded are to be taken *alive*. I'll have no executions."

Teresa smiled down at Clare and the girl smiled back, tears balanced at the bottom of her eyes from yawning. She felt closer to Clare after last night. Waking up beside her, held by her…. There was something in it that made Teresa feel invigorated; alive. She wondered if Clare felt the same; if it was what all humans felt afterwards. Would it fade, or would it always feel this way? Sometimes Teresa pondered whether to ask Clare, however she suspected the girl wasn't any further enlightened than she.

"Any Kazaar citizens encountered you will direct to this outpost, or the outpost in the central plaza."

"If they won't come?" one of the hired blades asked.

"Leave them," Captain Sabatte replied sombrely. "But I fear any honest soul left in this city is long past saving." He cleared this throat, his face hardening. "Do the job you were hired for and you'll be paid and fed well. The Lords of Karesia help those who help them."

The captain looked at a short and burly and unshaven sergeant nearby with a bandage around his throat and nodded at him, receiving a salute in return-mailed fist slapped over the heart-before striding away, his fierce pace threatened every step by a growing limp.

"I am Sergeant Lewin," the sergeant said hoarsely, moving over to where the captain had stood to address the mercenaries himself. "I'll be leading you. You do as *I* tell you. We stick together as a *single* unit-no running off alone, you hear? I ain't dying for any of you bastards, and we'll need cohesion if we're attacked. Filthy looters and cutthroats is probably what's waiting for us; scum hardly better than you lot; but doesn't matter who holds the blade that sticks you-dead is dead."

He gargled for a second and then hawked a disgusting glob of bloody phlegm onto the ground, panting afterwards. "The captain didn't say, but we're to check in on that second outpost in the plaza on our way. Didn't report in last ni- Hold on. *You*." He flicked a lethargic pointed finger at Teresa. "Is… *that*… yours?" the sergeant said, angling his head at Clare beside her.

"Yes," Teresa said.

"By all the…" Lewin swore, sucking the words through his teeth. "Tell me she's staying here."

Teresa smiled faintly and shook her head slowly from side to side.

"I'm not going to bring a child into whatever hell is out there! We're to bring people like her-those that haven't been *butchered*!-*out*, not in!"

"She comes with me," Teresa said, insistent. She would not leave Clare unless she had no choice. Deluthron was too fresh in her mind.

"Easy, sergeant," a mercenary called out, "you should've seen her last night. She's protective of her pet!" Boorish laughter erupted at the youma slayer's expense, yet Teresa paid it no heed. They were human, and Teresa was above the coarser human behaviour. It was like children teasing their elders.

"Bah, bring her then," Lewin ceded, before breaking out into a fit of coughs and spitting on the ground again. "K-Keep…. Keep her out of our feet," he wheezed. "If the brat runs off, none of us is chasing her."

"I'm not a brat," Clare whispered irritably, prompting Teresa to smile once more and rub the girl behind her head sympathetically.

"Enough of this," Sergeant Lewin grumbled, adjusting his sword belt around his waist. He pointed outside the barricade. "Move out, you trash! We're not paying you to stand around! You're on Karesian time now!"

* * *

The dead continued to cram the streets the farther Teresa, Clare, and the others got from the Karesian outpost. Animals too added to the bloodbath; dogs, horses, even livestock. The captain was right to fear-Alphonse had spared no living thing within these walls. In a city this big, it was eerily quiet without its people. The greedy chirps and caws of the carrion birds replaced the hubbub of citizenry; that, and the sergeant's barrage of abuse as the mercenaries patrolled. Every other sentence of his was some sort of insult; however the men and women loosely under his command seemed accustomed with the harassment.

"Gods, it smells!" Adaline moaned, holding her thick braid over her mouth and nose.

"What's the matter, never been around death before?" Sergeant Lewin shouted, and then breathed in deeply. "It's the smell of *you*. You scum are all about it."

"We do the butcher's work, woman," a mercenary added. "Nothing glamorous. Get used to it."

Teresa eyed Clare-still the girl was unaffected by the stench and horror of humankind ripped asunder. The blonde supposed it was to their favour this time, but she was grimly aware it wasn't how humans typically reacted, especially not the young. Teresa wondered if it was something that could be healed, or if like the transformation the organisation subjected young girls to, there was no way to return to that former self. But if the organisation had shown Teresa anything with its cold pragmatic creed, humanity was mouldable, in particular its youth. Clare might still have a chance.

Hours were devoured by fruitless travel down one street and then more fruitless travel down the next that intertwined, then the next, and then the next after that; the path seemingly bereft of rhyme or reason at Sergeant Lewin's lead, all the while stepping around fly-ridden corpses and pretending the whole city didn't reek. The mercenaries postponed the aimless wandering sometimes to investigate buildings on the whim of Sergeant Lewin-however they housed more of dead and only more of dead. No looters, no survivors, no enemy. Nothing but rotting flesh and the scavenging insects and birds it attracted.

The monotony wore on the hardened mercenaries in their group, no doubt longing for combat and the excitement it would bring-Teresa suspected the fate that awaited the first looters they might encounter would be on par with Alphonse's brutality. Even Sergeant Lewin's stream of abuse had lost its steam. Humans were intolerant and impatient, and quick to anger because of both. Teresa, however, was content. It was easy work for much needed gold, and there was no visible danger to Clare except from what sicknesses the festering victims carried. If she ignored the foul odour and fouler company, it would be perfect.

"Where are all the soldiers?" Merick suddenly spoke up while skirting around what was left of a family of a mother and her three children who had been cut down side-by-side on the street. "Why didn't they try to stop this?"

"This happened *before* we got here," Lewin huffed.

Teresa glanced sidelong at Sergeant Lewin. She had noticed it too. Dead Karesian soldiers were piled high at the city gates, but inside Kazaar their casualties suddenly dropped to zero. Stranger still, the blonde hadn't seen the remains of a single Alphonse soldier. Alphonse might have retrieved their fallen during their retreat, or perhaps their soldiers didn't wear uniforms and Teresa and the mercenaries were simply unable to distinguish them from the citizenry; they were northerners, and generally regarded as undisciplined and somewhat barbaric. However, Teresa didn't think much of either theory. The Karesian military knew the truth, whatever it was.

"Clare," Teresa barked, reaching over her shoulder to grasp the handle of her claymore.

She sensed it before she saw it. It hadn't felt her though; suppressing her yoki down to nothing was second nature to Teresa-sisters of the organisation were as much her enemy now as they were to youma, but there was no kinship among the hunted. Despite her deserting the organisation, youma were too dangerous to live when chanced upon. She wouldn't go out of her way to pursue them, especially since she had Clare in tow, but if they crossed her path she would do the human world a free service. Furthermore, Clare's approval for this charity was… agreeable.

"Youma!" one of the mercenaries yelled, hurriedly drawing his sword and stabbing it in the creature's direction.

The youma in question was a gaunt thing, lopping low to the ground from corpse to corpse, feeding on the putrid flesh it could stomach before moving on, clearly in touch with its animalistic side. Decayed visceral pickings were no substitute for a fresh kill, but slaughter on this scale always attracted youma. The scent of pints of spilt blood in the air, probably. Teresa had noted the bodies that had been gnawed on and concluded it as the work of scavengers in the absence of yoki in the area-perhaps she had been naïve, or simply optimistic. Where there was one youma in a war zone there was more in hiding-and this one was the runt of the pack.

The youma's head pricked up at the mercenary's cry, and quickly it shambled for safety, chased by arrows notched and fired by a few swift hands. The almost two dozen armed men and women were as good as a sister against a solitary youma-the creature hadn't de-evolved to the stage that it didn't comprehend certain ruin. It was weak and small, and it fed on the death others had dealt; no more a threat than the buzzards, really. If it hunted humankind at all, equally feeble and isolated children and the elderly was probably its quarry. It would find neither breathing here. Still, there was tomorrow to think about….

Although heavily outnumbering the spindly beast, the mercenaries dared not pursue it after their arrows failed to hit their mark. It was still a demon, feared by humanity.

At the mouth of an alleyway the youma glanced back at the group of humans, just as Teresa's hurled claymore smashed its head apart into blood and bone. It slumped against a wall, effectively headless, its neck pumping purple poison down its chest and filling the cracks between the cobblestones. It may have been the runt, but it had still been a youma. Teresa would not be responsible for its sins tomorrow, or any other day.

Teresa walked up to the corpse and picked up her claymore, swinging it harshly once to whip the blood from the blade, and then returning it to its sheath. The other mercenaries and Sergeant Lewin were staring at her, the feat she had just performed-throwing her giant sword end over end past them at a moving target metres away-worthy of human astonishment. It would have taken a human twice her size and with the muscles to match to do the same. Teresa had to be careful to temper her speed and strength and skill at arms so not to reveal what she was, but the youma had had to die. At least the display might ward off anybody thinking about approaching Clare in a sordid fashion.

"That was… amazing!" Adaline exclaimed as Teresa walked back to Clare and the group, gaping at the blonde.

There were murmurs between the hired blades, and guarded looks Teresa's way. If any had seen a sister in action before, or was even gifted with a competent intuition, Teresa may already be all but branded a 'witch' in many minds.

"Come on, move out, you dogs," Lewin growled, although he joined in staring warily at Teresa. "Plaza's close."

The struggling northern midday sun had dipped from its peak as Teresa, Clare, and the others walked into what had been the wealthy noble district of Kazaar. The finer cut and fitting paving stones for the streets and the intricate architecture of the buildings were not cheapened by the blood and bodies and smashed windows and doors. It oozed affluence; even the corpses were better dressed.

Walking down the street, the hair on the back of Teresa's neck stood on end. Her gaze went from window to window, lingering on the upper floors. She couldn't sense the presence of yoki, yet her instincts had her on edge.

The warrior took Clare's arm and tugged her closer to her, nearly inside her cloak. "Something's off," she whispered to the girl while maintaining her vigil on the buildings. Clare began looking around suspiciously as well, and then remembering her weapon, fumbled for the handle of her stiletto.

The twang of a bowstring releasing stopped Teresa and the other experienced mercenaries dead, and while the rest were looking at the arrow that had lodged in the signpost for a jewellery shop close by, the blonde youma slayer's and the combat veterans' eyes went to the source-a third storey window opposite the jeweller.

"Hold!" cried the archer, sitting casually on the window ledge, bow in his lap. He sported thick black facial hair with his beard oiled to a point, and a limp brown hood over his head, while his body was covered in leather armour.

Teresa heard movement in every direction, and more bowmen and crossbowmen similarly dressed in ragtag outfits took up positions at open and shattered windows all around the mercenary party, most of them on the second or third floor of the street's buildings. The woman's arm slowly lifted above her head, her fingertips tentatively brushing the handle of her claymore. Bandits. Or were they well-armed looters, being inside the city? In any case, Teresa and the mercenary company had walked into the middle of their perfectly executed ambush. A quick headcount summed up roughly a twenty-five strong force spread out in the windows, and however many more brigands still in hiding.

"Well, well, they finally sent in someone to clean this place up," the first archer said, shouting down from his perch. "Can't suppose that you lot would be another band of profit seekers; what with that stuffy tin can you've got there."

Sergeant Lewin snarled, his sword halfway pulled from its scabbard, probably the knowledge of the near hopeless situation they were in keeping the rest of his blade sheathed. It wouldn't take much for the bandits to make pincushions out of everyone in the street. Not Teresa, though, and not Clare. The human outlaws were lacking a yoki imprint telegraphing their intentions, but Teresa was a skilled fighter without relying on her special talent. Precognition was only useful if you could keep up with it.

"I know! I've got an offer for you," the bandit spokesman glibly continued. "This city is *ripe*. A fruit for the plucking. Alphonse didn't do a proper job-they left behind wealth you wouldn't dream of; 'the wealth of all Kazaar' wouldn't be a stretch! More gold and jewels, hell, more *anything* you could want. Free to anyone who wants to take it. And you *can* take it. You can join us." The man smiled slowly and broadly, in a manner Teresa could tell was not promising; the kind of smile Rubel and others from the organisation made-the catch for his little offer would have quite the vicious barbs.

"Of course, we can't take every one of you," the bandit explained with mock casualness. He stroked his pointed oiled beard. "Perhaps… half of you. Kill the man next to you. Then you can share in our fortune!"

"You bastards," Sergeant Lewin growled. He tugged his sword loose, pointing it at the lightly chortling archer. "I'll have your head here, or in a noose back at-"

An arrow thudded into Lewin's chest, knocking him off his feet and sprawled flat onto his back.

"The offer wasn't for you," the bandit archer said darkly, laying his bow in his lap once again and notching a new arrow. "The rest of you; come now. I recognise your type. You fight for gold. I have more gold than you'd ever earn slaving for Karesian fools. For those of you left standing, anyway…. You can join your soldier there, or you can join us. Decide."

Teresa's fist clenched around her claymore's handle. She didn't put much stock in human loyalty, but believed plenty in human greed. And at the end of the day, everybody just wanted to live.

A mercenary screamed and dropped to his knees as his neighbour suddenly plunged his sword through his back, the bloody steel tip erupting from his stomach. Teresa drew her claymore.

The mercenary company turned on itself, literally tearing itself apart while the brigands hooted and hollered at the gory spectacle. At first no one challenged Teresa, however it wasn't long before three worked up the courage to cautiously advance on her. They had seen her ability, and rightly feared it… but not enough. If they had, they would have left her and Clare alone.

The first former comrade lunged at Teresa, leading with his sword, while the second took advantage of the distraction and swung his axe at her neck. They moved so slowly. So different from youma. So human.

Teresa deflected the sword away from her body with a relaxed swipe of her claymore, and then with equal ease brought up the thick blade to catch the axe's haft short of her neck. She pushed, knocking the axeman off balance, before smashing the pommel of her claymore onto the forehead of the swordsman, sending him into a stunned, barely conscious heap on the ground.

The third mercenary charged, leaping over his fallen cohort, great sword held over his head for a downward cut. Steel struck steel as Teresa parried the blow, the strength of her block almost tearing the mercenary's weapon from his grip. She kicked him in the chest and he stumbled backwards, tripping over the prostate man clutching his head behind him.

The axeman roared and wildly threw himself at Teresa again, axe chopping through the air, but the blonde caught his wrist redirected his momentum away from her, causing him to lurch and fall face first onto the street. Teresa could have killed him easily-she could have killed all three of them easily-but she would not resort to that unless she had to. Taking a human life, despite having succumbed to it before, was still considered a taboo to her. It was engrained in her, and not something simply discounted… save for when it was justified, and right.

"Get back!" Teresa heard Merick shout, and looked toward his voice to see him waving his sword at a group of former companions with one hand, and pushing Adaline behind him with the other. The traitorous men before Merick smiled menacingly and with confidence in their sinister eyes-they had sized him up long ago, and knew he was all but a pushover.

"Give us the woman, and maybe you'll live through this," one mercenary said, from his face clearly delighting in his position of power. "Is she worth your life?"

Another mercenary suddenly stabbed at Merick's left, but the boy managed to catch the attack with his weapon, slapping it aside, though only narrowly. "I said get back! You won't all get past me! I swear it!"

"Teresa!" Clare pressed, having seen the peasant couple's dire situation too.

After a glance at Clare, Teresa strode forward, stomping a steel boot on the axeman's back as he started to get up and then literally walking over him as he groaned.

"T-Teresa!" Adaline frantically called out to the youma slayer, all but hopping up and down while she clutched at Merick's shoulders.

The group harassing the couple turned to face Teresa, their pluck suddenly draining as she loomed.

"There's plenty to kill," Teresa said, stopping to stand in front of them, one hand on her hip. "Just not these two."

"You can't beat all of us," one mercenary spat, his sword raised in one hand as the other surreptitiously-to him, anyway-went for a throwing dagger in his belt.

"No?" Teresa replied, smiling faintly.

The dagger was hurled underarm at her chest, however got no further than the broad side of Teresa's claymore. She didn't want to kill them, but it was getting tiresome.

The dagger thrower scowled, and readied another blade. "She's just one! We ca-urk!" The crossbow bolt tearing into his larynx stoppered further words. He dropped to his knees, vainly trying to grab hold of the metal shaft protruding from his neck, the blood upon it too slick.

Teresa whipped around to deflect three arrows out of flight with three consecutive strokes of her claymore as more of them and crossbow bolts rained down upon the street. The bandits had tired of the game.

"We need shelter," Teresa snapped, seizing Clare's arm and leading her quickly through the hail of wood and metal. The blonde kept low as she raced for the nearest building, Clare's body cradled in front and under hers. Her shoulder made short work of the jeweller's front door, crashing through it better than a battering ram.

Inside, Teresa spun Clare around to face her and knelt down, looking the girl over. Clare was wide-eyed and breathing hard, Teresa's terse behaviour no doubt similarly infecting her with a sense of anxiousness if the fighting had not, but that was it. The bolts and arrows had missed her. Teresa let out a long breath and cupped Clare's cheek, smiling at her. Clare smiled back.

Teresa looked over her shoulder to catch Merick and Adaline burst inside, the former dragging Sergeant Lewin with him. Teresa had forgotten about the peasant couple, and was surprised Lewin was not dead. Indeed, the sergeant was conscious and directing fierce looks outside the building's storefront window, spewing curses and gesticulating with his sword, the arrow that had knocked him down still lodged in his chest.

Two other mercenaries dashed inside the building, arrows at their heels. They nodded to Teresa when they saw her, their weapons kept lowered. Survivors of the betrayers or simply realising survival lied with her, they would do no harm.

"Let me look at it, let me look at it," Adaline was saying earnestly, attempting to hold Merick's left arm still so she could look at the arrow piercing it.

"No time for that!" Merick cried, grimacing and pushing her away. He went to his knees and dropped his sword on the floor, before taking the arrow's shaft in his right hand. Teeth clenched, his hand shaking and sweat pouring from his brow, he snapped the arrow in half, leaving the tip and a small length of shaft embedded in his forearm.

"We might be able to hold here," one of the two hired blades said; a bald woman decked out in a coat covered with square iron panels. "Funnel them through the door and window. If none get past-"

"Window's too big!" the other mercenary-a thin, weasel-like man with dozens of daggers about his body-retorted, shouting his frustration. "We can't stay here; they'll be here in seconds!"

"The outpost," Sergeant Lewin croaked, lumbering unsteadily to his feet. "At the plaza. It's near, not a few streets east from here. Thirty able men."

"We'll… never make it," Merick gasped, holding his arm, fingers splayed around his bloody wound. "Maybe a patrol will come."

"I'm not waiting for a 'maybe', boy!" Lewin bellowed. "I'm not dying here, not to those dirty beggars!"

Teresa watched and listened. She could kill them all if so inclined. Every single brigand out there. They wouldn't stand a chance. But she was meant to be human, fragile just like Merick and Adaline and everyone else cowering here. Did she wait for every outsider with her to die before unleashing her full might, so no one would live to see and later retell the sight? It wasn't her responsibility to save these humans. It wasn't youma outside.

"We make for the outpost," Teresa said. It was their best hope-second best, after her.

Everyone seemed to agree, the order coming from Teresa apparently having indisputable weight. Merick heaved himself to his feet, using his sword as a crutch, and went to Sergeant Lewin's aid in spite of the man's caustic tone, slinging one of the soldier's arms over his shoulder. The other two mercenaries looked at the wounded pair dubiously. Teresa could predict what was running through their minds-it was a foolish choice the boy had made; Merick would likely die with Lewin slowing him down. Teresa thought so too. But compassion and self-sacrifice were lauded human traits, and she could understand. Sometimes you could simply not abandon someone; something inside of you would not let you. Sometimes the wrong choice was only one you could live with.

Teresa lifted her claymore, and then wordlessly bolted out the door. Arrows and bolts greeted her, but her sword was as good as a shield against them, splintering wooden shafts and turning aside metal barbs. The bandits' initial volley spent; Clare, Merick, Adaline and the other survivors ran into the street behind Teresa, with Sergeant Lewin pointing where they had to go.

The bandits had assembled at ground level, standing amid the fresh corpses of the unfortunates in the mercenary company. Teresa walked into the middle of the street to face them.

"Clare!" Adaline beckoned, hanging back as Merick and the rest fled, her hand outstretched to the girl. "Come on!"

Clare shook her head, not budging from behind the stony-faced Teresa.

"Leave them!" the male mercenary yelled, sprinting at full pace, no doubt desperate to get out of range of the bows and crossbows.

With a final tortured glance back, Adaline did, holding her skirt up in a fist and running hard to catch up with the tattered remains of the group.

The bandit leader smirked, standing at the front of his men, and shook his head, stroking his beard. "Loose," he said simply.

The brigands had reloaded, and did not hesitate in firing at the lone woman and girl a short distance away from them. They were without mercy; without compassion.

The arrows and bolts flew with tremendous speed, greater than a dozen bearing down on Teresa, and behind her, Clare. Teresa waited; her expression a porcelain mask. Then, with alacrity unmatched, slashed her claymore up and down, left and right, over and over again, sparks exploding and steel ringing as the unbroken flurry cleared the barrage from the air.

"I've seen warriors who could do that," the bandit leader said as the last arrows and bolts clattered onto the brick paving. "Dedicated. In touch with themselves. They could do amazing things, certainly. But they bleed the same." He drew a rapier from his belt.

His men followed suit, the host of blades unsheathing combining into a long, cacophonous rasp.

"Don't kill the girl," one said, "there's some things Kazaar doesn't have!" Heartless laughs ensued, and Teresa's knuckles paled as she tightened her grip on her sword.

The leader wasn't the first upon her; he was smarter than that. The first was the foul-mouth, with three of his friends. They were confident as they cut and thrust with their blades; arrogant with their hugely superior numbers, sure of victory. But victory never came as a promise; it only came to those who earned it. These humans didn't know what they faced.

Teresa locked her claymore against the hilt of the foul-mouth's crude sabre, holding him in place. He sneered at her, baring yellowed teeth inside his evil grin, as he fought to press his blade forward. Teresa raised her head, and silver shined within her hood. The bandit's eyes widened. And then Teresa pushed, her greater strength twisting his sabre in his hands and the edge of her claymore through his throat. The blood sprayed-red, like a sister's, like her own, and yet not.

Teresa swung her claymore, decapitating the bandit to her right, and then slashed to up and to her left, taking another man's sword arm at the shoulder, leaving him screaming like a banshee. The fourth fell back in horror, scrambling back to his comrades as the blood rained down.

Teresa turned around, picked up Clare clean off the ground in her free arm, and ran after Merick, Adaline and the others. They had deserved it, she told herself. And she had delayed the brigands long enough for the others to get away, and perhaps put the outlaws off pursuit altogether. Moreover, no one knew what she was, except as an exceptional fighter. She had done… *right*… here.

"AFTER HER!" the leader roared above the maimed bandit's frenzied screaming, before stabbing the man through the neck to silence him. He put a boot to the one-armed brigand's back and pushed him to the ground, pulling his rapier free. "If any escape, it's *over*!"

Their greed spurred them; Teresa should have known it would. It was a challenge to curb the demon in her legs and not speed ahead, or bound away off rooftops. Nevertheless, she ran like a human; a strong, very fit human, on the border of perfection, but no further than that. The blonde wondered if it was wasted effort; if she would be killing all these men within minutes.

Suddenly, she felt it. Her eyes snapped wide open. Yoki. Immense, distinct yoki; individual auras pooled into a massive collective. The pit in her stomach told her she knew where it was originating from.

The central plaza spread out before Teresa and Clare, an oasis for a jumbled, dense city. Improvised fortifications like the ones at the city gates had been erected around the circular stretch, defending the Karesian soldiers standing watch and going about their duties inside. Merick, Adaline, Sergeant Lewin and the two mercenaries were rushing towards the barriers shouting warnings and for help as the soldiers looked on. But it was not an oasis for them, or anybody else.

"Get back!" Teresa shouted.

At the sight of Teresa and Clare and the brigands on their tail, the survivors hurriedly picked up their pace, Merick struggling to keep Lewin on his feet, the sergeant frequently crumbling onto one knee. The two hired blades had no such burden, and were the first to reach the outpost, climbing over its crude walls.

"Oh, you fools!" the bandit leader cried while his men ran past him, humour replacing his earlier bloodthirsty timbre as it echoed around the plaza. "How did you think we could operate so close to a Karesian outpost? They're *ours*!"

The mercenaries stopped dead halfway over the blockade, in shock, staring at the passive, unarmed soldiers. They could see now. The soldiers' uniforms were torn and bloodstained, and there were bodies that decay had not yet touched; naked bodies hollowed out, eviscerated; lying inside the outpost. No, the soldiers weren't the brigands' men in disguise. They were humanity's nightmare.

Otherworldly shrieking struck up a chorus throughout the plaza, the potential death knell for everyone who heard it. The human faces they wore warped, devoured by the demonic, while their bodies twisted to mimic their new visages. Youma. And not youma like the one Teresa had slain earlier in the day; these were fit and well fed… but still craving more morsels to gorge on.

The mercenaries groped for their weapons, too panicked to even let out their final screams, but almost instantly disappeared under a swarm of slashing claws and shredding teeth. The youma that didn't join the feeding frenzy threw themselves over the barricades, seeking the other treats on offer.

"No! How can this…?" the bandit leader exclaimed, backing away yet unable to take his eyes from the rampaging horde charging towards him and his men.

"Clare," Teresa said, putting the girl down and turning to her. The youma slayer smiled. "Wait for me."

Clare beamed up at Teresa, no fear in her gaze, and then nodded confidently.

The youma had not sensed Teresa's yoki-and they never would. She didn't need but a sliver of her power to deliver their destruction. Teresa took two steps and then launched herself into the air, before descending on the pack. Her hood flew off her head as she soared, her golden locks free to whip in the wind and her eyes to sparkle in the sun.

She drove her claymore through a youma's skull down to its groin and then into the brick below as she landed, its insides annihilated in a single blow. She ripped the blade loose, flinging purple blood over the demons nearby before the razor's edge cleaved through a trio of youma stuffing themselves on a howling brigand. Their heads left their bodies, meat still in their fang-filled maws.

A youma leapt for Teresa's back, but she was already whirling around, its yoki having reached her first. The creature skewered itself halfway down the length of her sword, still roaring and straining to scratch out her eyes. The blonde spun to face new foes, the impaled youma sliding off her claymore and bowling into others of its kind, already dismissed by the warrior.

Finally realising the threat, the remaining youma ceased their feeding and united to attack Teresa, converging from every direction around the woman. More and more youma reached for her-however they lost their hands and sometimes their entire arms in the effort, followed by their lives, the hurricane of hacking steel unstoppable in Teresa's grasp. She tore them apart as they did to humans; she was humanity's weapon against the nightmare. This was what she did. This was what was natural to her.

But Teresa was a willing weapon with her own mind, her own thoughts and reasons.

Through the tangle of limbs and bodies and haze of demonic blood, Teresa saw Clare hiding underneath a wagon, behind a wheel. Clare saw her too, and every flawless, fluid thrust and cut. The faint smile on Teresa's face was for her. Bandits. Youma. They didn't stand a chance.

* * *

"He died for me," Adaline said. She lay motionless on the cot, her peasant skirt bloodied and in shreds, swathed in haphazard, red-soaked improvised bandages mostly taken from clothing. They were Teresa's work; enough for her to survive the journey back to the gate outpost. It looked grim, but Adaline would live through this. She had the care of the Karesian healers now. The deepest wound she suffered would likely never heal, however.

When the final youma had fallen, there had been only Teresa still standing in Kazaar's plaza. With the battle over, the plaza had suddenly plunged into a strange silence. The brigands had abandoned any pretence of fighting off the youma hunger and had tried to flee; mere criminals, not soldiers, generally incapable of courage and heroics. For their greed, they had been slain to the last man. If any had survived the initial attack, their injuries had been too severe to see them live to the end of the fighting. The bandit leader Teresa found a short distance from his men face down, his throat torn out and his ribcage exposed. He had tried to run like everyone else. Teresa had wondered briefly if it was a deserving end for them, and if she held resentment for not killing them, and the leader, herself. But ultimately dead was dead, and the measure of satisfaction was the same. If some had lived she wondered what she would have done. The answer would have been straightforward months ago-leave them be, though likely not tend to their wounds. Now, though, Teresa didn't know.

Sergeant Lewin had probably succumbed early; a gravely wounded human was easy pickings for demonkind, and he had been too close to the infested outpost. Teresa had spotted his body among the other corpses, his sword nowhere to be seen. Fate had decided he die here after all.

Like the sergeant, Merick and Adaline had been too near to the outpost for Teresa to hold any hopes of coming across anything but a grisly scene involving the two of them. Merick had lain nearby Lewin, his blade still clutched in his hands, drenched in the blood of youma. He had not died pretty, but he must have fought almost like a youma slayer himself to have Adaline live on. Ravaged beyond belief, it was a miracle the peasant woman had been able to still draw breath. But Merick had done just enough.

Adaline had crawled next to him, her blood smeared across the brick paving marking where she had dragged her broken body from. Teresa had discovered her lying on her side in a grievous amount of blood, staring glassy-eyed at Merick. She hadn't even cried out once when Teresa had rolled her over and dressed her wounds, and then hurriedly carried her back to the city gates, a journey that had to have been painfully jarring. Adaline had seemed to have died in the plaza for all intents and purposes, until now.

"He died for me," Adaline repeated. Voicing what had happened seemed to release her emotions from whatever paralysis gripped them; tears swelled in her eyes and her voice became thick. "We wanted to start a new life."

Teresa looked down at her from underneath her hood, glad of the shadows. She wasn't sure what she was meant to say-if she was meant to say anything at all. Teresa had never experienced human loss, and what words could she provide to make up for a life? Some humans-*people*-some people were irreplaceable. That much Teresa did understand.

"I just want to go home," Adaline whispered, turning her head away.

Teresa turned away as well, joining Clare who waited solemnly at the foot of the cot, and left Adaline and the provisional Karesian infirmary. Adaline had her life; a gift from someone who had cared for her. What she did with it was her choice, but at least she had that choice. It was more than most received at the hands of youma.

"Not everyone can be saved," Teresa said softly to herself.

"You tried," Clare answered, somewhat startling the blonde woman.

Teresa blinked at Clare, and then gave her a small smile. Clare understood too-she understood Teresa.

A Karesian soldier approached Teresa and Clare from across the gate outpost's courtyard, shakily saluting the older woman. Teresa's hood covered her eyes, but the word was out. A 'Claymore' walked among them. She guessed it was hard to play down being completely uninjured after almost an entire mercenary outfit and a military field outpost had been massacred, and with over two dozen youma felled in her wake. Anybody else would not have returned, let alone slain the feral creatures.

Teresa sighed wryly. Being recognised *was* better than that alternative.

"Captain requests to see you," the soldier said.

Teresa nodded and stepped past him, and walked to the Watch house with Clare. She knocked sharply on the door, but didn't wait for a reply and instead let herself in.

Captain Sabatte looked up from his deskwork with his one good eye and stuck his quill in the ink pot on his desk, leaving it there. "Claymore," he said. He got up from his chair, using the desk as support for his lame leg, and limped over to her, handing her a pouch that clinked. "Your payment."

Teresa flicked her hood down and shook out her hair. "It looks more than I expected."

"Gold for the entire mercenary company, save one; the woman in the infirmary," Sabatte explained. "If I had known a Claymore was fighting for me I would have paid you more anyway. But you earned this."

Teresa took the bag, weighing it in her hand as Sabatte stepped back to sit on the edge of his desk with a quiet groan. "We didn't take back this city," he confessed, looking to a large map on the wall of the northern lands. "It was abandoned. There are no heroes here; no victory for Karesia. We're losing this war."

That explained the lack of Alphonse dead inside Kazaar. "Alphonse didn't sack it," Teresa said. "There's something in that."

"But its *people*," Sabatte said earnestly. "They invade us just to kill us. What reason is that? Honour, land, wealth; I understand. But war for the sake of war? Alphonse had no reason for hostilities. Their lords are usually fiercely independent, never to agree with each other. To see the Alphonse city states united for this, *this*! If there is sense I cannot see it."

"It's a human affair. A human war between humans. It doesn't concern me," Teresa said.

"Yet you fight for these 'human affairs'," Captain Sabatte retorted. "You do not even wear the uniform of your kind." He sighed and his shoulders slumped and his head lowered, a suddenly weary and beleaguered commander staring at the floor. "The northerners have always been a little rougher around the edges, but nothing to the extent of what I've seen. Their forces-massive hosts, numbers I never dreamed they could muster-commit atrocities and consume whole armies of our own. Men, and women and children. Even brutalised after they're executed."

Humanity could always make monsters out of themselves; none of it surprised Teresa.

"My men, all of us; we all have wives and children we want go back to. Some of us fight for the money, or out of obligation, or for loyalty to our lords. And some because it's the right thing. Alphonse must be stopped. We fight and sacrifice, but they keep coming like locusts." Sabatte looked Teresa directly in her silver stare. "I don't care why you fight. But I want you to fight for me. I promise you'll earn enough food and board for yourself and your girl there, and gold. Gold aplenty; by the end of our campaign enough for whatever you intend."

Teresa lightly tossed the bag of gold in her hand, the rods jingling together. She opened it and pulled out a fistful, stuffing the money in a belt pouch. She threw the lighter bag of gold at the captain, who caught it. "Give that to the woman."

Teresa touched Clare's arm, indicating that they should go, and moved for the door.

"Wait!" Sabatte cried. "What say you?"

Teresa stopped and drew her hood back over her head, and then glanced over her shoulder to the desperate man. "We just want to go home," she said.

* * *

Teresa stared into the crackling campfire as Clare dumped more small twigs on top of it, raising embers into the night air. They had made camp outside Kazaar; it didn't feel right remaining in the outpost for the night, despite the little comforts it could provide. The youma slayer had been around too many humans for too long.

For a moment Teresa had been tempted by Captain Sabatte's offer. A steady stipend, a place to belong…. Familiar, and secure. But she was not human. She would never belong with them. Their squabbles were alien to her, their cruelty abhorrent. Teresa was a living weapon for humanity, but she was not to be turned against humanity. She had killed humans; a murderer in the organisation's view; but criminals, scoundrels-never purely for the sake of money and human politics. And yet, she had been tempted.

Teresa reached into her bag and pulled out the scraps of her uniform. She touched the six-pronged grey symbol on the black collar with her thumb, tracing it. Her symbol; and the mirror to the one emblazoned on her sword.

Clare let out a squeak when Teresa flung the uniform on the fire, but except for that kept silent. That uniform wasn't Teresa anymore. It never would be again. She shouldn't have hanged onto it for so long.

"Clare," Teresa said in faraway, bright voice. "Did you know there were lands where no one has even heard of a 'Claymore' before?"

"Mm-mmm," Clare mumbled, shaking her head and sitting down beside Teresa.

"Far from here, beyond Alphonse, beyond the frozen mountains, beyond all the northern lands…." Teresa smiled wistfully. "Or so I've heard."

* * *

The End… for now.

Author's ramblings:

Originally I had Teresa joining up with the soldiers for the war, but eventually felt it was out of character.


	4. Monster

Monster - By Kirika

* * *

Teresa and Clare return for more!

- Kirika

* * *

"Two days... perhaps three. But no more, I believe." Lenora toed through the ashes, black and grey flakes giving way as toiled earth to shiny steel sabatons, the young woman somehow divining sense from the remnants.

"Are you sure it was she who camped here?"

Lenora squatted at the small pit dug in the frozen earth and plucked something from amid the cinders and scorched wood. She held it up to the sun's light, caught between two of her fingers-a scrap of cloth. Pale grey, and charred around the edges, but unmistakable. If she'd thought to hide her past in this fashion, she should have ensured the fire finish the task. There was no other reason for the turncoat to start a campfire-it wasn't cold enough this far north for the nights to bother their kind, and there was seldom game roaming these barren plains to roast upon the flames.

No, there was one other reason-she did not travel alone. Peculiar that one such as she would bother with human comforts... No. The fire was to rid herself of her uniform, nothing else. They'd been bound to find it sooner or later; the merchant of death back at Deluthron had spoken of a 'witch' in rags buying armour from him. *Armour*... what was she thinking? Another effort to cloak herself among the humans, no doubt. But she had to realise the futility of it. She wasn't one of them-she could never be.

The portly armsdealer had shied away from mention of the girl, but Josel had seen in his nervous gaze whenever there was mention that the young human had been in his shop with the traitor. Shifty, that one had been. He had greatly feared Josel and the rest of her party, more than humankind usually did, as had the town's other inhabitants. Josel wondered if the murderer had terrorised Deluthron before passing through. In any case, the merchant had been content to point out the direction their prey had gone, and Josel and her sisters had been content to leave him and the town be.

Graadenhold had kept its secrets locked tighter; however there were not many young girls in the company of fighting women in these parts-or anywhere else, for that matter. After some scouring of the city's streets and attractions, and a little pressure on the right people, it was the Karesian military that had ultimately found itself submitting to the organisation's authority and aiding in the hunt. Mixing herself up in a human war-did her bloodlust know no bounds? She had even used her real name on the contract. The arrogance. Did she believe mercenary work would legitimise her slayings? Then she was not only a killer, but delusional as well.

The traitor's mercenary company had been destined for Kazaar, and so here on the outskirts of the apparently once besieged city Josel and her two sisters were, destinies entwined... until *her* head was removed.

"Why camp here when Kazaar's so close?" Elina mused, standing with her hands on her hips while she gazed at the great walled city, or what persisted after the human's squabbling. The sun rose from behind the broken parapets and crumbling towers, setting her silver eyes alight and turning her short straw locks to golden silk strands. She was young, and the lowest among them. The twenty-first. Not a bad rank for her youth, but for this assignment? Useless.

"To burn something that should not be burned," Lenora intoned without inflection, flicking aside the cloth and rising to her feet. "Away from those who might see." Rank fifteen, and climbing. There was a good head on those slight shoulders; constantly tempered, forever in thought, coolly evaluating everything-duty first, and nothing else after. Lenora understood her role. She was a weapon, a defender-that was her life, and there was no room for other things in it. As it should be. Still... Useless.

"Which direction?"

"I can't say," Lenora said. She skirted around the campfire, eyes intent on the dirt and patches of coarse grass. "The ground is too hard; there aren't any tracks but for those belonging to wagons and heavier."

"I'm sure she left a mark," Josel murmured, however her attention was not on the ground, but on the city dominating the pastel horizon to the north. "Somewhere."

Lenora and Elina followed her gaze and her train of thought, visibly steeling themselves, the youngest going so far to reach over her shoulder and touch the handle of her blade. Their prey had come here as a sword for the highest bidder-Kazaar was probably where she plied or had plied her butcher's trade, or at least where she was stationed or had been stationed between missions. If she was still within the battered walls, Josel would pry her out from whatever rock she had slithered under-and crush her with the rock.

The guards at what was left of the gate said nothing at the youma slayers' approach, and did nothing to bar their passage. The uniforms Josel and her sisters wore that the traitor had discarded-along with her honour and her right to live-and the identical swords on their backs granted respect from humans-no one interfered with a 'Claymore's' business.

There weren't any shortage of looks from the men, however. It was expected. She and her sisters were enigmas, mighty warriors, wielding a weapon an ordinary human would struggle to employ anywhere near the effectiveness they displayed-they fought that which the men, despite their martial pursuits, could not. Yet they were women; seldom found in military ranks unless freelance and unrestrained by convention. 'Silver-eyed witches' they were branded. Not a benevolent sounding title, but there was fear in the looks as well. That was natural too. They were right to fear-Josel and her sisters were but a handful of steps separated from that which they fought. The traitor had even less steps to spare.

The soldiers wore the crest of Karesia on their tabards. It boded well. If Kazaar had been in Alphonse's tenure it was unlikely the murderer would be here, unless in the thick of blasphemy, fighting the occupiers for those who had purchased her allegiance. Josel didn't hear the din of battle, and thus imagined Karesia had the territory well in hand for the most part. Wading into two warring human factions where stray blades and arrows were abundant hadn't been an appealing thought, and Josel was glad to cast the possibility aside for now.

While the humans continued with their scrutiny beyond the gates, it didn't keep them from whatever duties they had. A wagon filled with the dead; ravaged and dirty, and in their smalls for some odd reason; was being picked over by one soldier who chose his steps carefully perched atop the pile. He had a sleeve over his face while his other hand checked the sallow and rigid countenances of his kin, though for what purpose escaped Josel. The sleeve was easy though-the place was permeated with the reek of decay.

More soldiers, fully armed and armoured, marched deeper into the city in rank and file through an opening in a barricade haphazardly erected from everything under the sun; orphaned bricks and shattered barrels, split troughs and crippled carts-anything wooden or heavy that could be moved, stacked high. It smacked of desperation.

Lighter outfitted men criss-crossed the street, often burdened with a sack or barrel, or with the occasional corpse rolled up in a tarp, flies tagging along. In was then Josel noticed the mounds of dark ash at the curbs and in the sidestreets, blackened bones sticking up with burnt wooden beams from the filth. More mounds were being built all the time, yet to be lit. Soldiers and peasantry and those of class mingled in them together, all equal as fuel for the cleansing fire, and the flames soon to make them indistinguishable from each other if their wounds hadn't already.

None of it concerned Josel. The humans could do what they wished. But she regarded everything around her all the same. More and more she was becoming sure it wasn't discipline that kept the soldiers moving in the presence of her and her sisters. The men were used to the sight of them. They were used to the sight of 'Claymore'. Or one particular silver-eyed witch. Josel couldn't sense yoki other than her companions', but that wasn't a guarantee of absence. *She* could still be in the city. Perhaps they'd caught up at last.

"You there. Hold," Josel barked at the nearest passing soldier. He bore an injury, as many of the humans here did, his left arm strapped immobile to his chest with off-white sheets of torn cloth. But it seemed no cause for his hunched shoulders and shuffling gait. He appeared to glare at everyone and everything, and for a moment Josel thought he had been deliberately giving her and her sisters a wide berth. Unshaven, and his black hair greasy and gnarled, he looked... unclean. An officer might have been a better choice.

The soldier halted and lifted his head, revealing bloodshot and dark-rimmed eyes, a jittery gleam behind them. They widened somewhat at the sight of Josel's face, perhaps seeing it clearly for the first time, but then he went back to scowling. He came closer anyway, and Josel heard Elina's breath hitch beside her-he stank.

The soldier spat at the demon slayers' feet. "What do you want? No youma, here. The other witch *supposedly* cleaned them out." He scoffed. "Probably in league with them, she was. Her *and* the whelp. No one believes me. Fools. They'll learn, and it'll be too late." His eyes darted to his comrades in the street as he bared his teeth, and Josel wondered if he even remembered that she and Elina and Lenora were there. But let him have his delusions-*she* had been here!

"Where is she now? The other... 'witch'?" Lenora asked dispassionately, her gaze cold for the bitter soldier.

"What do I care?" the soldier snarled suddenly. "You and your kind... think you can do what you want. Bitch got the Sarge killed, and most everyone else. Look at what she did to my arm!" Spittle flew and his eyes burned, but Josel and her companions were unmoved. The wrath of a human was feeble when weighed against that of a demon's, and they had faced-and slain-dozens upon dozens.

"Be grateful that you have your life," Lenora sagely remarked.

"More Claymore in my outpost! And dressed the part, this time."

Josel turned to see another soldier approach, and by his uniform's adornments was a human of rank; at least in the higher echelons than the men she'd seen wandering about. He had wounds that were hard to overlook as well; one of his arms in a loose sling and an eye covered by a bloody bandage tied around his head. He limped as he walked, and Josel had an inkling it was more debilitating than he tried to make it appear.

"I am Captain Sabatte," the newcomer greeted, "and I appreciate your more candid arrival. I imagine you were moments away from formally introducing yourselves to me... yes?" His tone was friendly, but his good eye spoke of something else. Humans and their perceived authority. Was it not enough, the sacrifice Josel's kind made to defend them? Human scuffles were children's feuds before the world's greater, *true* evil.

Meanwhile the first soldier spat again on the ground near the youma slayers' boots, and scurried off, muttering curses. But he had already been dismissed by all three women, no longer worthy of notice.

"We seek a deserter," Lenora declared.

"A murderer," Josel added.

"With silver eyes and flaxen locks, I presume? Yes, she was here," the captain said. "Did good work. Saved lives-one in particular; a young woman. And she's a murderer?"

"Of the most heinous sort," Josel said. "Beyond redemption."

Captain Sabatte smiled thoughtfully and rubbed the stubble on his chin. "I doubt anyone would label her 'murderer' here... except for Hans." He bobbed his head at the other soldier disappearing into what the signpost above door said was a tavern, but could be anything in the military's keep. "The woman she saved is still in the infirmary, if you want to talk to her."

"And how many humans did she kill to save that one?" Lenora asked impassively.

"There were bandits; natural in this environment; but it was self-defence I'm sure," Sabatte replied. "Ultimately they fell to the youma, and the youma in turn fell to her."

"It is not her place to judge the value of human lives," Josel snapped. "All are equal. And how do you know the youma slew them? Perhaps she merely *told* you that."

"I believe I know the difference between what a claymore and a claw do to flesh," Sabatte answered coldly. "She is responsible for one or two human casualties; that is all."

"No. That is too much," Josel growled harshly. The bodies in the wagon-youma handiwork, as she had suspected. So she had not abandoned her duty utterly. It changed nothing; she was still a murderer, proven by the words of her 'commanding officer'. Allying with humans to kill other humans... Sickening. Execution was too lenient for her.

"She's not here anymore, is she? Where did she go?" Elina piped up.

Captain Sabatte sighed and looked away. For a second Josel thought he would be... difficult. However- "North," he said at last, quietly. "My men saw her and the girl head north."

"Thank you, captain," Josel said, before striding past him back towards the city gates. "If we get lost, we'll be sure to return." If he had lied, she meant. She was confident the captain understood.

"She said they were going home," Captain Sabatte called after Josel and her sisters. She heard him well enough, but didn't react. Home? There was no home for one such as *her*, unless it was the grave. One day, one murder; she'd grow to like it. Maybe she wouldn't Awaken, but she'd lose herself and become a blight on humanity nonetheless. She was no better than a youma. Humans, sisters-she had killed both kinds. Irene, Noel, Sophia, and Priscilla; the last hunting party had been slaughtered by her, veterans and rookie alike. Josel would show her an equal measure of mercy.

Still... the party of Flash Sword Irene had been far more skilled than Elina and Lenora... and herself, if she stomached admitting it. If Josel's companions were apprehensive, they hid it well behind their zeal. But for all their fervour, they were weak. They would be cut down easily, but they had been the only sisters the organisation could do without-youma activity never ceased, and the stronger were needed. It would be up to Josel, the new number one. It was a rank earned through attrition however-the traitor still held the rank in her eyes. Pitching her claymore against the murderer's would determine if Josel was truly deserving of it.

Deep down though, Josel knew she'd win. No matter what it took, no matter what happened to her, she would lay the traitor low. She would kick and scream and *scratch* if she had to, but she would save humanity from this threat. The traitor could do her worst-Josel was a walking corpse already.

The soldiers still had plenty of looks left in them as the youma slayers' departed; the majority from sidelong glances aimed at Josel, those that didn't immediately turn downcast at the repugnant sight of her. The woman noticed her reflection in the dull hue of a gate guard's spaulder, mercifully distorted on the curved steel. Humans, even those with a warrior's discipline, usually hadn't the mettle to rest their eyes on her for long. Her fellow sisters had their own physical stigmas-there was no disgust or scorn from them, at least. Yet Josel did not hold it against the humans. Hers was not the face of a saviour. It was the face of a monster... it was the face of a victim. It was a memory, a vow, carved in flesh.

Josel had been human, once. She'd had a family, once. She'd had a home, once. The youma had taken everything. It had made her body its canvas, and drew a portrait of its twisted soul on her skin and with her blood. It had left her eyes, so she could see its artistry, and watch her home burn down around her once it had lost interest, the flames consuming the bodies of her ravaged loved ones. Josel should have died with them. But she had clung to life, *clawed* through the smoking rubble and the bloodied corpses, and eventually, been reborn as an instrument of vengeance, birthed with the very blood of her enemy. The face she saw in the mirror; the burns, the scars, the torn lips and rent cheeks, the patchy clumps of hair stuck to a disfigured scalp; reminders all of humanity's peril. No other young girl would be forced to endure what she had as long as she was alive. Youma, Awakened Ones, fallen sisters-every one of them a danger to humans, and every one destined for the edge of her blade.

"North... We'll be nearing the border to Alphonse, sooner or later," Lenora noted as they traced Kazaar's walls round to the northern trail beaten into the dirt by countless feet, hooves, and wheels. Closer to the human war, closer to their prey.

If Teresa of the Faint Smile had a taste for war, then Josel the Relentless would follow her into one... and bring her own, waged with her claymore, if she must.

* * *

The caravan trundled ever onward, the uneven ground composing a rocky ride. Teresa held Clare in place next to her as good as an iron bond, lest the scrawny girl be jostled off their wooden perch and under the hooves or wheels of the rest of the merchant train at their heels. It was an irrational precaution however; the pace of the train was barely faster than walking-Clare would have to fall not just off the rear of the wagon, but into deep slumber as well to end up crushed into the dirt. Of course Teresa would not sit there idly either should that remote chain of possibilities happen.

No, it was the cold that Teresa primary guarded against. The closer they got to Alphonse's border the more frost clung to grass and leaves, and the more breath became mist in front of everyone's faces. Fixed on their northern route, they could look forward to the temperature dropping lower still.

Shivers ran through Clare's body every so often, prompting Teresa to press the girl nearer to her and briskly rub an arm, as though it could magically instil the lacking warmth. Clare was bundled up in scarves and cloaks-glorified rags really, though kindly gifted by the head merchant's good-natured wife-so much so that only her eyes and a bit of the bridge of her nose was left for the north's chill bite. But what the lean girl needed most was more meat on her bones. Until she plumped up, Teresa had to lend her own body to Clare. The cold didn't bother someone of Teresa's sort, even as it crept ever below freezing. The demon caged inside her, its rage, was heat aplenty.

Teresa felt Clare move underneath her embrace, and then slowly sink into her lap. The woman touched a fingertip to an icy cheek below her, curling it across the soft skin for a brief moment, before draping her arm over the frail body. She smiled within her black hood and curtain of flowing golden locks, the cold air taking nothing from its warmth. The merchant train they had hitched a ride with may have been not much different than walking, and was sometimes slower in fact, but it was still an improvement. While Teresa had no trouble with tirelessly marching leagues on her two feet, Clare wasn't like her. She was human. She was young. She was... delicate. Even if their progress lagged, it was worth it for Clare's comfort. They'd walked enough.

The stark plains that had surrounded Kazaar had given way to a smattering of trees, with the occasional thicket to break the monotony of shrubs and tall grasses-a little more life, but not much more. The journey was still through a lonely land, and besides the merchant party there were no other travellers. Not a soul-not even Karesian patrols or fleeing refugees. The war must have scared off most, and those living on the Karesian side of the border close to Alphonse that were willing to evacuate probably had already. As for the soldiers... perhaps they had been driven back? Whatever-it wasn't Teresa's concern. In any case, it was likely an eerie atmosphere for her human companions, but the blonde couldn't fault the peace and quiet. She welcomed it. It was old times for her, harking back to her travels in long stretches of solitude with just her thoughts for company. But the company had changed, hadn't it. She shared the road. She shared... a great many things. And her destination didn't hold blood and violence as a certainty like it had in the past-it held hope. It was a destination Teresa would be glad to reach; one that *she* had chosen, and that ideally would be her last. The 'old times' she recalled were just that-old. Worn out. There wasn't anything fond to remember in them.

Teresa's head remained bowed; her vision filled by her new life snuggled on her lap. She had been mistaken-there was nothing lonely about this road.

The woman looked up and saw that she was being watched. The driver of the caravan following them regarded her with unmasked suspicion and askance frowns, probably trying to hit the right angle to see through the shadows inside her cowl, and all the while his imagination altering the face and secrets contained beyond. It had been a stroke of luck encountering the merchant train, and another that its leader, Gaelan Amon; a plump man with a bushy grey beard and balding scalp; had been a pleasant and welcoming fellow. The majority of the merchants with him were too, families included, at least on the surface. There were a few however who weren't quite so free with their friendship, or tenuous with their distrust. Teresa had been a warrior in the middle of a warzone with only a young girl as her company when she and Clare had run into the merchants, plus a warrior that kept herself cloaked and hooded at all hours. Moreover, the men and women of the caravans were not natives of this land, but of Alphonse, caught unawares and far from their home when the war had broken out. They had naturally been a little wary of her in the beginning... but once they'd realised she wasn't going to butcher the two dozen or so of them, the merits of an extra sword on hand, and a competent one at that, had swayed most opinions of her to favourable. And then there had been Clare, innocence to Teresa's dubiousness. The girl's presence had likely soothed several nerves-a mass murderer or Karesian spy wouldn't be looking after an orphaned girl now, would she?

The price for a ride on the rear steps of Gaelan's caravan that doubled as his home away from home, and for a share of the merchants' provisions every day, was that Teresa was expected to fight if trouble happened upon the party. The merchants' guards were simply members of their families-sons and nephews-with chipped blades or crude clubs strapped to their belts; Teresa's employ was probably a relief to them most of all. They would have sufficed though, with the road ahead looking as desolate as that behind it. The blonde couldn't see herself being called to fulfil her oath.

The driver in front of Teresa wrinkled his nose and idly beat his indolent and indifferent horses with a switch, giving up on unravelling her mysteries for now. Suspicions aside, the Alphonse people were kind folk, contrasting the stories of uncouth barbarians she'd heard Karesians tell. Yet Teresa had seen the uninhibited carnage in Kazaar... Merchants and soldiers were worlds apart.

"Ahh... That's a sight I feared we'd never see again!" came a shout.

"Gods be praised! War's at our backs, now!"

"Not long now, gentlemen!"

Teresa drew her claymore slowly, so not to alarm the edgy driver, and turned its polished blade so that she could see around Gaelan's caravan, putting a picture on the steel of what lay ahead that had enamoured the humans. Snow-capped mountains had emerged through the mist on the northern horizon, ranges associated with the city states of Alphonse. No wonder they were happy-home, the sanctuary that was always ready to embrace you, was a welcome sight for anybody.

However, there weren't just mountains waiting for them on the horizon. Perhaps only her silver eyes could make it out, but there was a wooden palisade blocking the pass ahead-an outpost. It could be Karesian, but in a key strategic area like the border mountain pass and this far north it more likely held allegiance to Alphonse, the dominant force in the war. It shouldn't be a threat... not to a sister; to a 'Claymore'. There were no borders for her kind, no locked doors, even for a deserter. That would mean revealing herself though, and leaving a trail that she wasn't doing well in obscuring thus far. And it meant startling the merchant train, which suddenly might not be so hospitable.

The caravans and wagons ate up the miles all too quickly despite their lumbering pace, and it wasn't long before everyone else not gifted with a youma's sight could see the blockade. There was no cause for the merchants and their families to mirror even the small concern Teresa had, however-the standard that flew from the battlements did indeed belong to the city states of Alphonse, its mountain peaks in front of blue skies the crest for its united soldiers. If Alphonse's military were truly slaves to bloodlust as Kazaar's streets had told, it was still doubtful they would unleash their appetites upon citizens of their own land... for the most part.

The merchant party eventually threaded through the open gate of the palisade, until stopped by the raised head of a soldier who walked in front of the head merchant's caravan from Teresa's left, triggering Gaelan and the rest of the line to rein in their horses. From underneath her hood Teresa eyed the tops of the walls and wherever else soldiers loitered, and was surprised at the bored looks cast upon her and the merchant train, or the complete absence of any regard whatsoever. Perhaps they didn't think simple traders were a danger, but in a time of war it was strange. It could be the soldiers had been at their post too long and seen nary a hint of the battles devastating the southern territories. Whatever the case, they didn't seem like berserkers capable of vicious atrocities. They looked just like Karesia's people, really.

Yet it shouldn't be forgotten that humans were duplicitous by nature. The human heart could hide any measure of abominations in Teresa's experience. None were to be trusted offhand, and when trust *was* earned, it should be given in piecemeal until judgement was absolute... if that time ever came. Teresa had encountered only one exception in her long life. Only one.

"Ho, travellers," greeted the soldier who'd brought the caravans to a standstill. Teresa couldn't see from the back of the Gaelan's caravan, but she heard the head merchant's four horses snort and the soldier's heavy boots crunch on the ground as he approached. Other soldiers drew nearer too, a small handful, casual curiosity and having nothing better to do rousing them from their duties' monotony. They poked under covered wagons, pried the tops off barrels with the tips of their swords, and generally snooped around. They weren't shy about their nosiness, nor were they quiet, and it was a flat of a blade banging against the side of a crate that eventually jerked Clare awake.

"Shh..." Teresa shushed, bidding her to remain still. She laid her hand on Clare's head, gently coaxing the girl to let it drop back into her lap. No point drawing unnecessary attention to themselves.

"Where do you hail from, and what brings you here?" the soldier at the front of the caravan line demanded to know.

"Why, we call Alphonse home of course!" Gaelan answered jovially. "City of Lavore, myself. Trade had taken my friends and me far, but with this... 'conflict' all of a sudden, we thought it best to return to familiar places... and customers..."

"Oh, yeah? Not armsdealers, are you? Selling to the enemy? Or spies? We've had the higher-ups on our arses about outsiders and spies for weeks... Not really one of them, are you?"

Gaelan laughed heartily, and there wasn't anything nervous about it. He was too good-natured to perceive the subtleties of an authority's intimidation tactics. "Oh, no, no, no, no, *no*! Nothing like that! Hah, me, a spy? That's a good one! And armsdealer? I don't think so! Why, what's to stop my customers using the weapons on me?"

"Hmm... What about your 'friends'?" the soldier persisted. "Can you speak for them, too?"

"I can, I can! Like family, they are! We always take on the road together. From Pieta to Rabona, to-"

"Alright, alright!" the soldier shouted impatiently, Gaelan's buoyant spirit apparently not infectious. But then- "Any Claymore with you?"

It was asked in a cavalier fashion, as though the soldier was reading from a checklist or posing a well-worn question. But he had Teresa's complete attention.

"Claymore?" Gaelan's voice was hushed now, as though speaking too loudly of those who hunted youma would cause them to appear. He needn't worry if Teresa had her way. "Why would we travel with... with...?" He couldn't even say it again. "Rather, why would they travel with *us*? Th-They keep their distance from... from us... They work-"

"Yes, yes," the soldier dismissed, lacking patience for the merchant's verbal flailing. "Together with outsiders, Alphonse is barred to the witches."

"Why? Something to do with the war?"

"Bah, hell if I know," the soldier spat. "I just do what I'm told. Bad news if you've a youma problem, heh heh!"

Teresa heard the rhythmic tapping of metal on wood getting closer, and then one of the inquisitive soldiers appeared from around the right side of Gaelan's caravan, sword unsheathed and held limply in one hand, the point scarring the already flaky paintwork of the merchant's mobile home. He started at the blonde's shadowy image, and glanced back in the direction he'd come from; probably at the soldier asking the questions. Teresa didn't move but for her hand on Clare's head, stroking it soothingly. She hoped he'd fail to notice the long shaft of steel jutting over her shoulder.

"Got anything good?" the lead soldier yelled.

Another soldier jumped down from the wagon he'd been rummaging through, dusting his hands after he'd landed. "Nah, it's all peasant stuff, Lieutenant. Candles and pots. Few knives, but like I said; peasant junk."

The lieutenant emitted a disgusted noise in the back of his throat. "Nothing at all to donate? Wine? Ale?"

"I'm afraid trade was profitable in the south..." Gaelan said, his tone grovelling.

"Fine. I'll not keep you any longer. On your way! Bring something for us if you travel this road again. A little appreciation for your homeland's soldiers, right boys?"

A cheer went up, one that the soldier before Teresa joined in on, lifting his blade in the air.

Meanwhile Gaelan needed no further prompting, whipping his horses to trot onwards with anxious shouts. For all their sakes Teresa hoped his horses would sense their master's mood and not be as lazy as they had been.

The soldier watched Teresa roll away on the back of the caravan... but that was all. And he didn't do it for long, his attention diverted by orders barked from the lieutenant to get back to their duties. Perhaps the soldier thought her part of Gaelan's family; a mother with her child, or something equally innocuous. Humans could rationalise anything, sometimes even when the truth was staring them in the face... or from underneath a cowl.

There was almost a palpable aura of relief once the last wagon had cleared the fort's second gate. Teresa understood-seldom had she seen an authority not abuse its power. Moreover, the relief was somewhat shared by her. If she'd been discovered it wouldn't have been her and Clare's doom or anything near it, but it was inconvenience she was glad to have avoided. Gaelan's hospitality had done more than allow Clare's feet a rest.

"Why would they not want Claymore here?" came Clare's small voice as the girl sat up, Teresa's protective arm following her.

As the palisade became a dot in the distance, Teresa asked herself the same thing.

* * *

The day was dying, what feeble sun there was bleeding orange across the otherwise dreary skies in its fall towards the earth. In these lands the nights were dangerous, but not specifically from wild beasts or roving bandits that were the common terrors of the dark in the south. When the sun left it took its heat with it, and though small, it made a difference in the daytime here. Already, not many miles from the border, the ground had disappeared under a carpet of snow, with more piled on branches and leaves of evergreen trees and plants that grew in abundance in the northern clime. Exposure could claim a human life in Alphonse quickly-and that was during daylight hours. Stopping at sunset was a must, as campfires were a must.

Frailties to the cold weren't worries of Teresa's. A night out in the open claimed *human* lives swiftly. She could have sat in the snow in pitch black if it suited her. The blonde had a place in front of one of the roaring fires stoked high by the merchant party nevertheless. Teresa had shared the merchants' and their families' fire and their company whenever they made camp, if only to appear friendly-as one of them. But she could never forget she was not. If given the choice the woman would have kept her distance. Several of the humans probably would have preferred it that way too; Teresa's quiet and ominous presence in their midst was not exactly the perfect show of friendliness despite her intent. They had been on the road many days and nights together now though, and most were used to her enigmatic aura and one word responses, along with her limited appetite. Gaelan and some others that had remained sociable in the face of Teresa's reticence seemed forever compelled to try and feed her however regardless of her polite refusals. Perhaps they were attempting to make her fat to better ward the cold? There had been comments on how lean she was in her armour.

The camp was nestled in the middle of one of Alphonse's frequent forests, just off the road that was barely noticeable in the snow. A few fallen logs had been dragged over to keep bottoms off the wet ground until the fires warmed a comfortable radius, and pots with supper inside them had been hung over the flames. The merchants and their families gathered around the warmth, spooning stew from the pots into bowls, all the while talking; their tongues loose as though Teresa was an accepted part of their group, or the blonde's silence rendered her invisible among them. They talked about home, and what awaited each in their respective sanctuaries. They talked of long unseen relatives, long unseen sights, missed comfy beds, and longed-for foods that hadn't been tasted in months. It was all so very human.

Teresa could not talk of such things even if she'd wanted to join in. Her thoughts were mired elsewhere, on the border outpost and the banning of her sisters from Alphonse. There were few places in the world where 'Claymore' were not welcome, but they *did* exist. That said, her past pursuit of youma had taken Teresa into the northern lands before, albeit not many miles past the border, but she had roamed freely during those times, her service appreciated everywhere it had been sought. The restriction now had to be because of the war, but war was not a legitimate excuse. This was unheard of. If anything youma thrived in the whirlwind kicked up by warfare, feasting on the freshly dead and killing indiscriminately at and near battle sites, where a corpse was seldom offered much scrutiny. Teresa's kind were needed in the chaos more than ever-humans could kill other humans en masse as far as the organisation was concerned, but *youma* killing humans by the dozens was abhorrent to them. Karesia were still allowing sisters within their borders; why had Alphonse adopted this unwise policy? Was it simply fear and mistrust of the 'silver-eyed witches' raised to fever pitch due to the conflict, or...? Or what?

Teresa sighed softly. Politics wasn't her thing, and *human* politics? She shouldn't strain herself thinking about the 'why' and just deal with what was. She supposed it wouldn't be much of a change for her-she was already hiding herself under hood and cloak; Alphonse's 'witch hunt' wasn't really an inconvenience. So there would be more who sought her out-the human authorities were nothing compared to the organisation's hounds.

"Would Clare like another helping?"

Teresa raised her head to the rosy face of Gaelan's wife, Merlotta, the rotund woman-her stature a mirror of her husband's-holding a full bowl of stew in her pudgy fingers. The blonde had been pleased that Clare was happy to indulge the mealtime pampering where she had not-the other 'scrawny girl' to be fattened up. The generosity seemed to call for Teresa's permission every time for some reason however; as though the merchant party thought she would fly into a rage or react in some horrible manner if Clare was approached without her knowing. But it wasn't like Teresa wasn't accustomed to the apprehension of humans.

Teresa turned to look over her shoulder where Clare was playing with the other children. Perhaps 'playing' wasn't the right word. The girl usually just sat and watched while the merchants' juvenile offspring ran amok and did whatever it was that amused the young. They were several years younger than Clare though, if that mattered. Did that matter? For a moment Teresa tried to hark back to her human years, to almost her first memories... but they were insubstantial, alien things. It... didn't feel right to touch them, to hold them in her mind. Quickly, she banished them.

"Perhaps later," Teresa said, without looking from Clare.

As Teresa watched, a pair of small boys ran up to the swaddled girl, one of them proffering his wooden sword to her and speaking eagerly. Clare laid her hand gingerly on the whittled handle, speculative, her fingers wrapping slowly around the wood. They were toys to the children; to those who didn't know better. They were not too young to know, however. You could never be too young for that. It was something you could learn at any age, and typically was a brutal lesson that you were not quick to forget. These children were fortunate that such things were still toys to their eyes.

Clare took the sword to the boys' collective delight, and lifted it in front of her face, as though there were mysteries in the carved blade. There weren't, though. Teresa could have told her that. The sword was made for nothing else except to kill. It wasn't a tool to work the land; it couldn't be used to hunt for food; its singular purpose was to rend flesh and spill blood-to end lives. There wasn't anything noble about the sword.

"You should wash."

The boys took one look at Teresa suddenly there beside them and ran off, leaving Clare with their 'toy'. Clare simply looked up at the blonde and nodded, before pushing off the boulder she was sitting on and wandering over to where buckets of water hauled from a nearby stream were being heated over fires. The sword she dropped in the snow.

Under Teresa's gaze Clare joined the women and other girls waiting for their turn behind the caravans with a hot pail of water and scrubbing rag. She would be fine alone for a few minutes, or so the blonde assured herself. Teresa couldn't think of accompanying the girl, not here, not now, when Clare was with her own kind. Teresa's place was elsewhere, in seclusion and solitude.

It was easy to slip away with the fading twilight, and the trees hid what the deepening darkness did not. Teresa headed for the stream, a convenient find, but further east along its banks so she wouldn't be seen nor disturbed by the men still dragging water back to the camp. No one must see her.

At the stream's edge Teresa pulled down her hood and undid the ties of her cloak, letting it crumple into the snow. Her armour and claymore was next, every buckle undone until the leather and steel were strewn across the ground. The air was an icy caress over her skin, and the snow pressed underneath her bare feet and pushed between her toes would be numbing to anyone else back in the camp, but Teresa was unmoved. Even when she waded into the stream's frozen currents her breath did not hitch nor did she shiver. She felt the extreme chill, and there were goosebumps, but it didn't pain her or send a rush to her senses. Her body was different. Looking down upon it, naked as it was now, there was no mistaking the difference.

The stream was somewhat narrow, but it came up to Teresa's midriff when her feet were flat on the mucky bed. The running current kept the surface from freezing solid, and it also kept the waters clear and clean. Teresa immersed herself in the depths, dunking her head, before standing again and wiping her hands over her chest and stomach, taking with them the grime of travel. Her hands encountered more than just dirt however, the uneven skin that spread like a spider's web across her stomach and pubis the price for being able to sustain the abject cold. In truth, the deformity didn't bother Teresa. She'd lived most of her life bearing it. She felt no shame. Or she hadn't, before-

Teresa abruptly whipped around, seizing her claymore's handle in one fluid turn and raising it before her, the crunch of footsteps in the snow still in her ears. But the woman's grim expression fell and softened when the intruder was revealed to not be an intruder at all.

"You bathed quickly," Teresa remarked dryly as she deposited her blade on the stream's banks and promptly turned back around. There was a smile on her face however, not that Clare could see it. "How did you know I was here?" she asked as she splashed more water on herself.

"Your footprints."

"Ahh..." Teresa hummed knowingly. She hoped none of the merchant party would be as shrewd. They had no reason to seek her out, though. "This water is too cold for you. You should go back."

There was silence behind her, and Teresa believed Clare had gone. That was until she glanced over her shoulder to find the girl watching. Teresa sighed deeply and squeezed out the water from her blonde tresses. It would be troublesome if the water froze in them. "If you don't want to wash, that's fine, I suppose. But you should at least return to the campfires." When Clare didn't move, Teresa smiled reassuringly at her. "Go on. I'll be there soon."

Teresa returned to her washing, but she could feel Clare's continual gaze at her bare back. She wasn't going to leave. Teresa drew out her bathing just in case, however the girl was stubborn. The woman sighed once again, standing there in the stream. They would be in complete darkness if this kept up. Perhaps the darkness was what Teresa wanted though-something to hide what she was... so those green eyes wouldn't be repelled when they rested on her flesh.

With one foot on the bank Teresa hoisted herself out of the stream, her forearms lingering around her midriff. She didn't look at Clare but at her clothes, seeing salvation in them if she could only put them on fast enough.

Suddenly Clare was thrust up against her, her slender arms pushing past the blonde's forearms. The girl enveloped Teresa in an avid embrace, flush against the skin that should have repulsed her, as it did most humans. But Clare wasn't most humans; she pulled back and looked upon it, she touched it, she traced her fingers through the vile and unholy warping. There wasn't any repressed disgust on her face, nor was there hidden horror; there was... wonder... and then pity... and all the while acceptance. And for the briefest of moments Teresa felt more human than she had in... in memory. Clare loved her not in spite of what she was, but because of who she was. It included the scars, and the demons, within and without.

Teresa smiled faintly and brushed her fingers through the auburn hair in front of her, smoothing her hand to behind Clare's head. "Perhaps it's time we set off on our own again. By ourselves."

Her scarf lowered, Clare beamed brightly up at the warrior, those green eyes moist. Teresa had had a feeling she would agree.

* * *

The walls became a flurry of activity the closer Josel, Elina and Lenora came to the palisade, their silver eyes honing in on soldiers frantically dashing about on the other side of an array of sharpened stakes, stopping only to point and shout at the warriors' approach. Josel was vaguely aware that the standard that flew above the human heads and their flimsy fort was different from that in Kazaar and in the other cities further south. The other faction in the war, was it? She wondered what they were fighting about. Josel often mused of humanity one day uniting against youmakind, instead of their strength and their lives being squandered in rages against one other over pitiful grounds, and whether the organisation and her tainted breed would still be needed in such a utopia. A dream, Josel knew; the idealism perhaps part of the little girl that still survived in her. It would never happen. How could humanity be so ignorant to the greater threat? Youma plagued their lands and preyed on their people like an invading army, yet it was the 'Claymore' that were the opposing force. Josel and her sisters were humanity's weapon, their enemy turned against itself. Because they were stronger, the humans said. Because they wouldn't fear. But Josel was certain the humans didn't need to corrupt themselves to defeat this unnatural foe, if only they had the spirit to try. She'd seen too many do nothing in the face of the demon, peasant and soldier alike willing to cower as they are slaughtered and gorged upon as cattle. It is not their place to fight, they say as they perish, but the Claymores'. And with each cowardly death, humanity's spirit died a little as well... while the demon thrives.

"We seem to have caused a stir," Lenora remarked in her typical monotone, though none of Josel's number slowed their pace.

The soldiers scrambled at the base of the fort, heaving the wooden gates shut with urgency as though it was their southern enemy arriving on their doorstep. Archers appeared in a loose formation at the walls, a handful of them in a row, arrows nocked and bows half bent. The humans' frontier placement apparently had them tense. Or maybe this was how every traveller was greeted in times of war.

Suddenly an arrow was loosed, its flight followed by six silver eyes before it embedded itself harmlessly in the ground at the youma slayers' feet. Josel stopped in the same instant Lenora and Elina did. The humans had their attention now.

"Y-You there!" an Alphonse soldier yelled from the walls. "Go no further! It is my duty to inform you that by the rightful and *dignified* authority of the Council of Twelve, Lords of Alphonse, Keepers of the Hearth, Defenders of the Pass, Noble heads of Pieta, Melucia, and... uh, all the rest of them, Claymore and their agents are henceforth barred from the lands of Alphonse until we say otherwise!"

"So turn around and go back where you came from, witches!" another soldier shouted, inspiring similar jeers from his comrades.

Meanwhile Josel shared similar looks of surprise with her own comrades. Alphonse was rejecting the organisation? A strange turn, what with a war on. The youma enjoyed the open bloodshed found in large-scale battles. The northland's people would suffer even more because of this decision, as if the ravages brought on by warfare with their neighbours weren't already enough.

"For what purpose?" Lenora demanded. Josel would have liked to have believed that it was because Alphonse was finally willing to face the youma with their own force of arms and mettle, but whatever idealism lingered within her, it didn't make her a fool.

"Because it was so sanctioned by those above me *and* you! That is all you need to know!"

"This is the nearest path through the mountains," Lenora said, the humans dismissed as she turned to address Josel. "There is not another for many miles. Unless she has taken an indirect route through the wilderness to a different pass to elude us in spite of the extra miles, or has braved the mountainside itself, she must have come through this way."

Josel considered her sister's words. From what she'd heard of Teresa of the Faint Smile, she was not one inclined to cowardice and trickery. Then again, Teresa of the Faint Smile, number one in the organisation, shouldn't have been inclined to murder either. She also had a human girl with her by accounts. She could have cut a path through the wilds or scaled the rocky mountains if facing the hardships alone, but with a young human as her burden it wouldn't be wise-that was, if Teresa in fact cared about the girl. *If* she cared.

"Well, technically she's not part of the organisation anymore. The exclusion doesn't really apply to her," Elina quipped unhelpfully.

"Tell of who has come through here before us," Josel ordered the commanding soldier, or any soldier, her voice rising to an imperious booming.

"None..." the lead soldier started weakly, before clearing his throat. "None of your business!"

"We look for another of our kind-"

"I *told* you, you harlots are not permitted among us good folk! Now begone!"

"If she wanted to get through, she would have," Elina said, leaning this way and that with her hands on her hips as she appraised the human palisade, and seeming to not think much of it.

"Not alone," Lenora amended. "Our kind is easily recognised. She would have been discovered, and if she had forced her way I'm sure these humans would have had a different reception for us. She must travel with someone, a large party, one large enough that she can bury herself in. She flees us like a common criminal; it is no surprise she hides like one."

"Travelling with others, at another's discretion, would slow her down," Josel surmised. "She will not stay with them long, now that she's across the border."

"No. She will not," Lenora darkly agreed, she and the disfigured warrior sharing another, this time knowing look.

They included Elina in their regard, and then all of sudden the three blondes sprung into the air, their nimble feet balancing on the top of fort's walls' sharpened stakes for a moment before their powerful legs saw them leap again. Bow's twanged and arrows joined the women in the air, along with the human soldiers' screamed outrage. But like the steel volley their protests were futile-the organisation's authority was above *all* others, and the only a sister heeded. The weapons of humanity did not bend to a single nation's or state's politics. For the sake of the lives in those nations and states, they could not afford to.

The youma slayers sailed over the entire outpost and landed on the opposite wall, then used that as a final springboard to propel themselves into the lands of Alphonse, all three hitting the hard ground in a dead run. Their quarry was closer. The gap was narrowing.

* * *

The camp had settled for the night, those families with caravans not too cramped with unsold goods or souvenirs from the south blessed with slumber under a wooden or canvas roof, while the rest not so privileged had the starry skies overhead instead, with the night's wintery touch a tad crisper against their skin. The fires persisted however, sentinels against the silent killer, with three or four of Gaelan's group taking turns to remain awake to ensure that those sentinels did not wane in their crucial duty, and to watch that no more killers should emerge from the dark. Teresa heard the men move as quietly as they could through the camp, adding more wood for the flames whenever needed. They tried not to disturb anyone sleeping, but the blonde's ears were too sensitive to human inelegance.

Teresa lay with Clare amongst the sleeping humans, supine as was their custom. It still felt alien to her, awkward, but Clare seemed to prefer it, supine herself and pressed against her side. The girl was human, after all. But while she slept peacefully along with her kind, Teresa was wide awake.

The warrior kept her face wrapped and her eyes closed, playing the part, but she didn't need to sleep as often as humans did. However, Clare found slumber easier with her near, and lately more often when they were bundled together underneath a pile of blankets. True it was cold in these lands, and warmer next to each other, yet Teresa didn't believe that was all it was. While with the merchant train their clothes stayed on unlike in Kazaar, which was the cause of some uncomfortable poking now and then, but human eyes weren't normally as compassionate as Clare's were on the mark the bonding with youma blood left on a sister. Teresa supposed in these bitter nights the extra layers on the girl was for the better anyway.

Teresa wasn't bored during her time awake at Clare's side. As the girl slept it was a chance for the blonde to spend time immersed in her own thoughts, to close her eyes, and while not sleep, to rest just the same. A little bit of peace before the road again. A time to think back to her past decisions... and to be glad of them. To feel the presence beside her and know that it had been worth it. To understand that her life before those decisions, before Clare, had not been a life at all; that her life had truly begun back then, with Clare, when *she'd* chosen her life's purpose, and not left it to the robed men of the organisation to decide. Teresa had never daydreamed before; never dreamed; it had been too human for her, perhaps. But with her eyes closed and her mind adrift, she felt she came close.

Teresa sensed them before she heard them, their rapid footfalls beating the earth and kicking through snow. Their yoki gave the woman the direction of their approach and the velocity of it. Like the others before them, they came to rob her of her raison d'être, and of her life. They, whose destinies were not their own, but slaves to the bidding of a select cadre of humanity. Teresa had been like them. She didn't hate them, in fact she felt little for them. They were... nuisances, like bad weather, something to be dealt with but not raged at. If there was any emotion she had for her would-be executioners, it would be pity.

Teresa grabbed hold of Clare and rolled the two of them underneath Gaelan's caravan, through to the other side where the lights of the campfires didn't reach and the snow was still deep. Clare waked with a start and a yelp, the sudden tumble away from the blankets and frosty and wet replacement no doubt not a pleasant way to rise.

"Shh," Teresa shushed, getting to her feet and tugging the girl upright with her, their backs to the caravan. "We've been found."

Clare's face was a window into her fright, but Teresa was calm. Her yoki was suppressed to the point of non-existence. Consumed no doubt in their self-righteous zeal, her pursuers might think nothing of a human camp and run right by her.

But no sooner had Teresa finished the thought-the hope-the swift footsteps ceased and she heard voices.

"There are no tracks on the road beyond that I can see, and no fresh snow has fallen," one spoke, devoid of warmth or vigour. "Unless the forest is her home, then she is close... very close."

"I don't feel anything," another said in doubt, her voice young.

"That doesn't mean she's not here. She hides with those she slays," the first voice again spoke, this time with a sliver of passion behind her icy tones.

"Oi! What's going on...! ...Here...?" the watchman's voice petered out, the sight of 'Claymore' probably robbing him of his tongue.

A second watchman banged on Gaelan's caravan door until the merchant appeared, none too pleased judging by his grumbling. "What is it, now? I swear if it's just another wild dog, I'll-" Seeing it wasn't a wild dog or any other mundane animal, his manner abruptly changed. "C-Claymore? B-B-But they said you weren't allowed-!"

"We search for a deserter. One of us. Or she used to be." It was a new voice, a third, and Teresa recognised it. Josel, rank seven. Hers was a face you could not forget. "If you name her among you, then shelter her no longer. She is a slayer of humans, a butcher of your kith and kin. But we shall see you safe from this monster."

"There... You... This is..." Gaelan struggled. Others in the camp were rousing now thanks to the disturbance and Josel's bold words, a trio of 'witches' in the flesh before them likely seeming pulled straight from their nightmares, blurring the lines of sleep and awake. "There is no one like you here!" the portly merchant at last hurled out. "We are as... as f-family! All of us!" A similar declaration as back at the fort, but these women were not soldiers to be charmed. Sisters were above that. Or rather, they did not possess the means to relate to it.

"Not all of us!" someone shouted angrily, desperately. "What about her, the *mercenary*? The stranger! Not to be trusted, I said! It's her, it has to be!"

That was it. They wouldn't blunder past her. Not now that Teresa had been undone by human suspicion. She didn't blame the speaker, though-it was predictable human nature. Most of them had probably been thinking of accusing her. She was not one of them. The merchants and their families were probably scared too, though they had nothing to be afraid of from the warriors assembled in front of them.

"Yes, her! Her and the girl!" a woman screeched. "The swordswoman! *Teresa*!"

Teresa considered simply fleeing, bolting with Clare in her arms, letting the depths of the forest cloak her. Clare's weight was negligible, not at all an encumbrance. It would still be difficult outrunning able-bodied sisters, but it could be done. *She* could do it.

Teresa pulled the scarf across her mouth and nose down and breathed softly, the night air fogging in front of her face. A battle was inevitable. She could run, but not forever. They were too close now. Only the blade would dissuade them. At least if she fled she could take the clash into the woods, away from the merchants and clump of potential, however inadvertent, casualties-she had learned from Gagarak and the destruction her abandonment of the organisation had wrought upon the town-and away from Clare. It meant leaving the girl to the mercies of their former travel companions, but they wouldn't hurt her. Or would they? The girl who journeyed with a Claymore? Humanity was capable of anything, especially against their own kind. Clare could hide in the forest Teresa guessed, but there it was cold and far from the fires.

There was not much of a choice. Teresa would not risk Clare in the freezing cold just because of her ill faith in humans. The blonde would just have to end the fighting swiftly... and return swiftly. Surely the humans knew what would happen should she come back to find Clare abused. Teresa was a 'butcher of their kith and kin' after all.

"Stay here," Teresa whispered to the wide-eyed girl beside her, and bent her legs, preparing to unleash her yoki to attract her pursuers and launch herself through the snowy treetops.

"No!" Clare cried, grabbing onto Teresa's cloak first, before throwing her arms around the warrior's waist. "No... please..."

Teresa looked in surprise at the girl, her arms raised awkwardly over the slender figure that was clinging at her so. When Clare raised her head, the fright had become open terror, and her wide eyes had tears streaming from them.

"What if... it's like last time... with her... Pr... Priscilla... What if... you..."

Clare had learned from Gagarak as well. She had learned that Teresa wasn't invincible. That she too could bleed, and her sisters were the ones who could make it happen.

Teresa clicked her tongue and sighed resignedly, staring up at the stars. Silly girl. Well, whatever. So some merchants would soil their breeches. At least they'd go home with a tale to tell.

"Stay back," Teresa reworded, smiling wryly down at Clare.

"Mm!" Clare squeaked, bobbing her head as she smiled back. The fear was still there on her face together with her tears, but her gaze was bright and hopeful. And Teresa was reminded of why there were former allies after her, and why she, pride of the organisation, had turned her back on everything that had defined her-there were better reasons to fight.

A heavy clomp sounded from above them, and instinctively Teresa looked over her shoulder and up to the top of Gaelan's caravan behind her. A sister stared back, dressed in the uniform Teresa had come to dread the sight of, and eyes that were similar, familiar; a matching set; met.

"She's here!" the sister proclaimed, her cry warping into a roar as her face grossly contorted, becoming a beast's fang-filled maw, and her gaze suddenly shining with feral intent.

Turning back to flash Clare a last small smile, Teresa then leapt towards the sky, letting her momentum and then gravity pull her head over heels. She twisted as she dropped; drawing her claymore and bringing her body around to the face the campfires and her opponents they illuminated; and landed on the roof of the caravan with the gentleness of a feather's touch. She held her weapon by a single hand, precisely perpendicular to her body, observing her foes over the flat of the blade while the reflection of flames painted the steel orange and red.

The sister there on the roof with her had her own claymore unsheathed also, brandished in a two-handed grip with its tip levelled at Teresa, on the brink of striking, the leap and landing leaving the former number one youma slayer open to attack. Suddenly the sister's demonic visage registered shock, and immediately after, pain. Her chest erupted in a shower of blood and she screamed, her swing faltering along with her footing. She fell backwards onto the ground metres below, frantically trying to stem the gushing with a hand. She hadn't known that Teresa of the Faint Smile didn't leave openings, or at least ones that an attacker was capable of taking advantage of.

Teresa shook her head and crimped flaxen hair free of her hood. The face she wore for Clare was gone. She was as she'd been before meeting the girl; the porcelain doll-flawless, expressionless-except no one held her strings. The merchants and the rest of the humans looked on in awe and alarm, seeming rooted to wherever they stood. The sisters on the other hand were grim. Their claymores were drawn, and not with reluctance. Teresa wasn't a wayward ally, or a fallen comrade to be pitied. She could presume no quarter.

"Elina..." Josel's remaining companion breathed. Teresa didn't recognise her. But she'd had very little interest in her fellows while she'd still been in the organisation. She was aware of the greats of course, the ones whose names you couldn't help always hearing, even if they had succumbed long ago to the rigours of duty. However she'd had none she could call friend among the forty-six other warriors who'd still clung to their hollow lives alongside her.

"The new numbers one, two, and three, I imagine?" Teresa said, her blasé tone in contrast to her businesslike countenance. She'd expected more. Especially since these were lower ranked sisters bumped up the ladder courtesy of Priscilla's culling as an Awakened One. She'd half expected the organisation to reinstate Rafaela into service and to be squaring off with her right now.

"It doesn't matter who we are," Josel replied, hatred pouring from her. She was always a hot-blooded one, Teresa distantly recalled. "We're here to avenge those you've killed."

"Ahh. You're wasting your time," Teresa dismissed. "They aren't worth avenging." Criminals and worse; humans who had embraced their corruption more than others and had been deserving of the punishment Teresa had inflicted upon them. Humanity was richer without them.

The growling presence of Elina staggered from around Gaelan's caravan, her blood dotting the snow a stark red. It stained her uniform, spilling over the hand she kept to her chest to hold the gash Teresa had cut into her flesh closed. "Traitor..." she panted through her sharp teeth, plumes of hot mist bursting rhythmically into the air from her mouth as she tremulously lifted her sword in her other hand, willing to fight on. She was healing fast, the injury gradually closing before Teresa's eyes, and her hold strengthening on her claymore. The youngster's youma half preserved her, making light of a wound that any human would surrender to. Nevertheless, Teresa could have killed her outright earlier; she could have taken her head, or her heart, or maimed her beyond hope of rejuvenation. But Teresa had chosen not to. She didn't want to kill her executioners. They would merely be replaced, time and time again. Besides, Clare wouldn't like it. They just had to be stopped.

"Your own tongue betrays you," Josel snarled. "It tells how far you've fallen! It is a *pleasure* to end your existence!"

There was really no point to words; there was no point in venturing to explain why she stood here now, before past allies, her claymore wielded against them. They wouldn't understand. They could not feel as Teresa did. Were they even capable? Then again, Teresa herself had not believed her heart could still speak to her. All the more reason to try and spare her old sisters' lives.

Josel, and the other sister a second behind, threw themselves at Teresa, blades leading the charge. Teresa deflected one and then the other, and whipped around, tracing their flight. She watched as the pair deftly corkscrewed through the air, then somersaulted over until their feet touched upon the nearest tree trunk, shaking snowflakes like confetti from the branches. Their legs bent naturally with the force of their initial jumps behind them, and when the limbs would bend no further, the women thrust themselves back at Teresa.

However Teresa had not remained idle. She was already in flight herself, Josel and her comrade's intentions as battleplans laid bare to her. Steel flashed and sparked, and it was Teresa this time that corkscrewed and somersaulted, lunging from a trunk of a tree after her foes.

She saw Clare below her, looking up as she flew by, snowflakes scattering and pine needles trembling in her wake. Reflected in the girl's gaze was emotion akin to the rest of the humans-wonder and fright. But the fright had a different font; its source was the heart. For Clare, Teresa was proud to fight. She faced former allies, she was barely better than a bogeyman to the majority of humanity; however she plied her claymore still not because of any of them.

Teresa smiled as Clare watched; her faint smile she was named for; and it was a title that finally had real meaning.

* * *

Josel gritted her teeth, skidding on the balls of her feet to a halt through snow and soil, on solid ground once again. As anticipated, Teresa of the Faint Smile lived up to the legend, and in more ways than one. She was truly corrupted; a stain on the land and a pestilence on humanity. If salvation was at *all* possible, it could only be in justice exacted-in the penalty of oblivion dealt on the end of a claymore.

Teresa landed in front of the disfigured sister moments afterwards, displaying acrobatics that had her glide like a diving swan through the air before agilely hitting the earth, her black cloak fanning out around her. Her skill was phenomenal-that legend was almost as grand as that of her crimes. The greatest always had the farthest to fall.

"Lenora; we must strike simultaneously. Get around her, come from her blindspots," Josel barked.

"My... apologies..."

Josel looked to her right to find Lenora down on one knee, gasping; her weapon's point embedded in the dirt-the only thing holding her upright. She bled profusely from her side, the discolouration on her uniform almost reaching mid-thigh. She toppled, the severe bun she kept her hair tightly wound in coming loose and spilling out around her head on the ground.

Josel turned back to her enemy, only to then see Elina pounce upon Teresa like a wild animal that happened to have a sword. She'd opened herself up more to the youma blood that constantly sung in every sister's veins, her body bulging with grotesque brawn. Her swordsmanship was brilliant, on a level that belied her age... and yet she still looked young next to Teresa; brilliant, but merely defiant. More wounds appeared on Elina, and she leaned against one of the human caravan's before sliding away, smearing blood on the woodwork until the ground was there to cradle her ruined form.

"Get up," Josel sneered, her gloves grinding into the metal handle of her claymore, squeaking. "On your feet!" Her head snapped between her two felled comrades, willing them to feel what she felt, and to *feed* off of it. "If not for your own lives, then for the lives at risk! On your *feet*!"

Two creatures that looked more like youma than women arose-albeit slothfully and trembling-answering Josel's summons. The human onlookers scattered around them moved at last, a fat male superfluously bellowing to stay back as everyone scrambled to put distance between the spectacle that had invaded their camp. But Elina and Lenora were not the monsters. It was beauty that hid the genuine beast here.

Josel joined her sisters as they attacked, choosing a frontal assault while they tried to get at Teresa's flanks. Josel didn't see which of the traitor's blurred thrusts and slices connected, but suddenly the fury of Lenora and Elina's onslaught was snuffed out, and the frail bodies of two young women crumpled under the weight of a dozen wounds, drained of even their unholy strength. The battle had become a duel. Elina and Lenora had been useless after all.

Josel brought up her claymore in the nick of time to parry a chop at her shoulder, and tried to counter by spearing her own blade under Teresa's left armpit. However too quickly the scarred warrior found herself on the defensive again, desperately deflecting another and another blow, the former number one's sword coming from all directions, aiming at even her legs and arms-superficial areas. Josel couldn't stop them all, and cuts materialised over her body with the suddenness of a whip's lash. Seconds after they appeared though, the torn flesh meshed together again. Her body had endured more tortures, more scars, than anyone else's-there was no room on her flesh for any more. That was the gift the youma who had killed her family and destroyed her home had bestowed upon her-pain and mutilations were no more a danger to her than water was to a fish. She could not be stopped. She *would* not be stopped. She would rise again and again, always clawing towards the light. She was relentless.

Josel roared as her claymore locked with the hilt of the traitor's, finally terminating the barrage against her for the time being. The face she glared into was so beautiful, so different from her own. Yet their hearts weren't a reflection of their features. "You would kill them as you did the others!" Josel accused, her arms quivering as she fought Teresa's might, the steel of their weapons rasping together. Elina and Lenora were in the corners of her eyes, bloodied and broken-more to be avenged.

"They're alive," Teresa said coolly, as though she weren't in a fight for her life at all.

"Murderer! *Traitor*! You'll pay for them all-every one that you betrayed, every human life you took! This is the judgement of the righteous! Irene, Noel, Sophia, Priscilla-they will rest easier when I send you to join them!"

"I don't regret the lives I took," Teresa said, her voice serious for once. "Not one. I killed no one that hadn't earned it. Your companions, *you*; none of you have to die here. I-we-just want to be left alone."

Josel was already shaking her head halfway through Teresa's speech. "You don't get that right! To the ends of the *world* justice will hound you! *I* will hound you! Your life was for *them*, don't you understand? You betrayed not only us, but *them*!"

Teresa pushed harder on her blade, and Josel felt herself giving ground, inching backwards before the immeasurable strength. "My life is for her," she said.

Teresa was worse than a youma. She was worse than an Awakened One. She had not lost control. She was not a beast of instinct, she was not a creature born into evil. She had *chosen* her sin. The reasons didn't matter. The price had to be paid. *Justice* demanded it. The lives lost demanded it. *Josel* demanded it!

The woman reached into herself, where the killer of her family resided, and feasted on its ferocity, letting it gouge its talons and teeth into her flesh once again so that she might use it for a better purpose. She let it take everything of her but a sliver; she *became* it; she wore her nemesis's face and dressed in its form. She would not be stopped. She would *not* be stopped!

* * *

Teresa hopped back at the sudden explosion of yoki she felt, if the metamorphosis taking place before her eyes wasn't enough reason. The youma inside Josel had manifested, so much so at first Teresa believed she had Awakened. She had to be near her limit-the immense power that radiated from her was too great otherwise. Josel risked losing herself wholly to the beast. Moreover, if she remained in this state long enough, she wouldn't find the way back to herself.

Josel slashed at Teresa as the other blonde darted away-the youma wearing a sister's skin was a hulking monstrosity, but it was not clumsy. The extra vigour suddenly in her limbs caused a massive over-swing however, and her claymore and the fist that held it smashed into the side of Gaelan's caravan with Teresa's absence, terrifying the merchant's horses. The caravan was rocked on two wheels, and then the wood buckled and splintered as though it was rotten. Lacking the support of four walls the roof caved in on Josel's arm. But the enraged sister pulled her arm out without looking, hauling snapped planks and an assortment of crushed junk outside onto the ground with it.

Teresa heard squeals over her shoulder; unsurprisingly recognising Gaelan's and Merlotta's as the loudest. But she was quick to block them out, along with everything else that was trivial around her. Lenora and Elina hadn't been a threat; if they were ranks two and three, then the organisation had fallen on hard times. Teresa sensed the danger from Josel, though. She could still read Josel's yoki, yet it was a design smeared with mud-she had to uncover the intent through instinct and anger. There was indeed still a conscious mind powering that demonic form, and its every thought was bent on destroying Teresa.

Teresa made sure she wasn't where she'd been standing when Josel's overhead swing came after her head and the rest of her body, lithely leaping aside. The earth erupted where the steel struck, solid clumps of frozen grass and dirt flying into the sky. Teresa's predictions of Josel's attacks had her seem fast and the beast slow, but it was closer than the humans probably suspected. Eventually one of her predictions would be wrong, and she'd pay in blood. Teresa had to put her opponent down as soon as she could; Josel had to be crippled as her companions had been, and only then would Teresa and Clare regain their freedom.

Josel hacked at the more experienced warrior again, her blade obliterating a campfire in its path. Flaming logs, ash, and cinders assailed Teresa as she dodged the claymore, ducking and diving to within Josel's reach so she could have a reach of her own. Josel had the sense to try and parry, but Teresa saw it coming and didn't give her foe a chance. Her claymore cut just inside Josel's pauldron, where the metal didn't cover any skin, and she followed through until the razor edge had hewed through to the top of the sister's heart.

Josel howled-a wounded animal's cry-and thrashed at Teresa with the talons she had grown. Teresa flipped over the berserk fighter-pulling her sword with her-and was only half surprised that she didn't feel the sting of claw marks in her flesh.

Teresa frowned just a little when Josel turned and the injury she had inflicted, grave as it was, healed in no more than two seconds, making a mockery of her attack. Teresa hadn't encountered regeneration of its like before, apart from in Awakened Ones. But, undaunted, she was willing to put it to the test.

Josel came barrelling at her, knocking aside a wagon in her path and overturning it and its contents everywhere while people jostled one another to get out of the way. Teresa didn't rush to meet her, but was ready to strike when she came into her claymore's arc. She didn't hold back much-she stabbed, she chopped, she sheathed her sword in Josel's body over and over again, all the while evading the sister's retaliation. But no matter the number of wounds, no matter how much it must have hurt, the flesh knitted and blood clotted. And Teresa feared what she might have to do. Clare would have to understand.

The former number one sister retreated, a single backwards leap putting the feet needed between her and Josel, while the sister slashed angrily at the air that no longer contained her. Then Teresa was running, rushing towards Josel with every intent to end the duel once and for all. She kept low; she kept her arms and her blade out; ready to alter her swings however required. Josel's claymore was thrust at her-then it flew away from her. Josel's right arm followed it, severed just above the elbow. Teresa's body twisted, and her sword arm fluidly delivered a second blow. Josel toppled, her right leg detached at the knee, and the blood that flowed no longer clotted as swiftly.

Teresa lowered her arms to her sides, claymore in hand, and turned back to what she had done. Josel roared and screamed, prostrate on the ground; beating it with the two limbs Teresa had left her. It had to be done. Some sisters simply necessitated more grievous wounds than others to take the fight out of them. At least Josel had her life. With her unparalleled talent at healing, she could probably reattach the arm and leg too without ill effects. But of course, Teresa and Clare would be long gone by then.

The battle over, the merchants and their families looked merely to Teresa with wariness, as though she would now live up to Josel's accusations. The woman sighed. Again, she supposed she couldn't blame them. Their camp was in tatters, and there might have been an injury or two among their number. But no corpses. They too should be thankful for having life.

"T-Teresa!"

Clare's cry snapped Teresa back on guard, and she looked where the girl's eyes did-at Josel. The sister screeched and quivered, possessed by fits and spasms, and to Teresa's sheer amazement she saw a right arm and leg grow where there was none. It should not have been possible. Had she Awakened after all? The new limbs were bare of clothing while the maimed originals still wore it, and Teresa could make out scars and scrapes and other old wounds mottling the flesh-it was not flawless skin that regenerated. But it was a mystery for another time, and probably one she'd never get an answer to. If Josel wouldn't abandon her lust for Teresa's head, then Teresa would just have to take hers. It was a shame, but Teresa wouldn't fret over it afterwards. She'd given Josel her chances. She wasn't so selfless as to keep on giving them, not when she was forced to weigh them against her own continued life. Or Clare's.

"I will not be stopped!" Josel roared, her voice not human.

Teresa wouldn't be either.

Josel grabbed her claymore, ripping her old arm off of it, and all of a sudden was upon Teresa, her weapon locked with the other blonde's once again. It was Teresa who was driven back this time, her sabatons raking the earth as she vied for traction. She stepped back, hoping for a foothold-but it was loose debris it found. She tripped, losing her footing entirely, and before she knew it she was falling and Josel was looming over her, storming forwards to cleave Teresa in half.

"TERESA~!"

Clare appeared between her and Josel's claymore, arms outstretched, as if her small body could be a shield. The claymore wouldn't slow however-not before it collided with Teresa's, raised in front of Clare with time to spare. What a silly girl.

"I said to stay back," Teresa said through a longsuffering breath.

"L-Leave her alone!" Clare continued, unafraid of the steel that had clashed before her eyes, glaring at Josel.

Teresa put an arm around the girl's waist, about to hurl her clear of the duel. But Josel had stopped. Up this close to the sister Teresa noticed the burns and the scars were still there on her skin, though they were harder to see with the youma aspects altering her features and figure. Slowly however, those unearthly traits receded, Josel's body becoming that of a woman again, and her face kin to Teresa's.

Josel lifted her sword from Teresa's and stepped away, turning her face away as well. "People have looked at me as though I was a monster many times in the past," she said softly. She looked about the camp, where the merchants' feeble guards had nevertheless erected a staunch perimeter around the women and children of the party, with even the men who were rather over the hill to fight and without weapons of their own joining the line. "But it's the first time I've felt like one."

Josel looked back at Clare, who still held her arms out wide. "She... reminds me of someone..." she whispered, and even with her gifted ears Teresa had trouble hearing the scarred warrior. "Someone who... might have been, if for the grace of fortune... and a protector." She blinked, and her glassy gaze had vanished, steely silver focused instead on Teresa. "Flee," she said. "Flee, and find the girl a home. Then face your judgement."

Lenora and Elina had roused, raising themselves up on elbows on blood-soaked ground, their expressions telling of their disbelief at their comrade granting clemency however temporary-as was the merchant party skeptical that the battle was finally over. The humans' guard relaxed somewhat now that monsters weren't at each others' throats and their belongings weren't being tossed haphazardly about. Still, there wasn't a welcome in their chary looks.

Teresa carefully got to her feet, and slowly sheathed her claymore, her watchful gaze never leaving Josel. It was rather startling, but the exiled sister would take the offer, though not wholly accept it. Clare's place was with her. She doubted the girl would ever consent to being left behind anyway.

"Collect our things," Teresa said, and Clare obligingly hurriedly over to where they had been sleeping before the executioners had arrived, bundling up their blankets and hefting their packs onto her slim shoulders. When she had everything, Teresa at last walked past Josel.

"Your face..." Josel began as Teresa moved by her, "...it's prettier than mine. But underneath is the same monster."

Teresa stopped for a moment and smiled faintly. "Perhaps. But I feel like less of one when she looks at me."

Teresa continued over to Clare and walked with the girl back to the road under the gazes of many. The sun still had some time before rising again; as soon as they were well clear of the merchant's camp, they'd have to stop and prepare another fire. Hopefully Clare would be able to get to sleep again; Teresa would remove her armour this time before getting under the blankets, if it would placate the girl more-and she was certain it would. Alone again at last-it was how it was meant to be, and how they preferred it. They were outcasts, Clare included in a fashion. Humans did not travel with Claymore. And they definitely didn't love them.

"I will find you again," Josel called after them-after Teresa. "Your time is finite. Every day you live is a *gift*."

Teresa smirked and pulled up her hood. That, she already knew.

Darkness and falling snowflakes eventually erased the camp behind them-it was snowing, and a good time to stop and settle down once more. As Teresa looked for a suitable spot off the road, Clare spoke up.

"Why do you think she let us go?"

"I don't know," Teresa replied. She turned her head to Clare and touched her cheek tenderly with a finger, before adjusting the scarf over the girl's mouth a bit higher. "But maybe she felt it was the human thing to do."

* * *

The End... for now.

Author's ramblings:

Next chapter should have less action, and more Teresa/Clare bonding stuff and fluff, I think. I hope the fighting in this chapter was alright; it's tricky since Teresa is so tough, so coming up with entertaining conflicts requires a bit of thought.


	5. The Road

The Road - By Kirika

* * *

Teresa and Clare fluffy fluff. Well, kind of.

- Kirika

* * *

The wind wailed a strident symphony, howling as bloodthirsty monsters would as it whipped past the hardy trees and through the tenacious shrubs of the north, tugging on the branches of both. The wind too tried to snatch Teresa's damp cloak from her back, never giving up the struggle to strip her for longer than a handful of breaths. Snowflakes stuck to Teresa's face and frost dusted her eyebrows and long eyelashes, the winter boasting its power to the youma slayer, posing the challenge with every step the woman took. Ahead, the world was awash in grey and white; a bleak portrait of bitter cold, empty of light. Was it day or was it night? Senses attuned as a predator's intimated the sun had given up and set at some point, perhaps been torn from the sky by nature's wrath. The road onwards, unfamiliar to the warrior and her experiences this far north, was gone beneath a foot of packed snow, the break in the trees around Teresa the only indication that an earthen track existed under the deluge.

Gales, snow, even rain at times battered Teresa's body as she pressed forward, the challenge thrown by the blizzard defied, every step a fight, but one where she triumphed-though only to face another fight, and another. Her feet sank into the snow up to her knees, but it could have been autumn's fallen leaves for how much it slowed her. Anyone else-any *human*-would have succumbed hours ago under the unrelenting and unforgiving chill. However a human would have turned back before pitting themselves against such a storm. Teresa wasn't human and didn't have that option. The beast inside kept her warm; while her skin was as ice, her muscles and bones within burned with the demon's rage; its fire. And behind the woman, somewhere out of reach of her senses, were those that judged her and her actions; sisters once, and now, ignorant arbitrators. No, there was only forward. There had never been anything else.

The wind grabbed Teresa's hood and finally managed to pull it from her head, exposing her blonde tresses to nature's icy kisses, the locks flailing wildly as though the wind celebrated. She left both hood and hair to the cavorting wind, the bundle in her arms too precious for her to be distracted by trivialities. Swaddled in scarf, cloak and blanket, Clare's flushed face peeked out into the grey and white world, her eyes shut and her breathing laboured. There was no turning back, but human needs were still Teresa's needs for as long as she travelled with Clare. The youma slayer had thought to beat the storm, that she could defend the human girl from anything. But not every foe could be bested by the strength of arms; not every challenge overcome by raw might. It wasn't the weather that wore on Teresa's resolve but her own growing self doubt; her own gnawing worries.

Clare had become sick several days ago, stricken by some human malady that had gradually-and alarmingly-rendered her weak and exhausted and prone to coughing fits and bouts of disturbed slumber. Her small body was too hot, fevered, yet Clare shivered as though freezing, no amount of swaddling keeping the cold at bay. Her appetite mimicked a sister's; virtually non-existent despite Teresa's efforts to encourage the contrary with every flavour of sustenance she could find in these inhospitable woods.

Teresa didn't know what to do-a novel and unpleasant experience for one normally so possessing of cavalier self-assurance. Her kind didn't-couldn't?-get sick. Teresa could no longer remember a time when she'd been ill herself. She had taken her own vigour for granted and had nothing to help Clare-no wisdom, no herbs; *nothing*. Teresa couldn't lend the girl even the tiniest scrap of her strength, didn't have the human knowhow to cure her... all she could do was hold her close, *will* her to get better, and push through this blizzard and hope to stumble upon a town or a village or even a remote inn-any kind of *human* settlement. Teresa would pay anything the humans asked, do anything they desired, just to see Clare return to the girl she had met that long time ago; that girl of life and feeling. Teresa wondered briefly if this was fear. She'd never encountered it on the battlefield before, never felt it again since becoming what she was. The youma couldn't stoke it in her, the organisation couldn't force it in her, but this simple human girl... the emotion was reborn in Teresa because of Clare.

Memory of Josel appeared in Teresa's mind. A monster couldn't take care of something so pure and lovely; it simply didn't know how. It wasn't in its nature. Ultimately the monster would hurt what it claimed to love-if 'love' was something that it could truly ever feel or understand-inadvertently or not. If the monster really had any inkling of affection or compassion it would let its beloved go free; give them the chance they surely didn't have with a deluded creature rising above its emotional station. In that sacrifice, maybe that was as near to comprehending love a monster could hope to reach.

Teresa slipped-the ice and snow all of a sudden dragging her down to one knee. She clung onto Clare, holding her tight to her chest, keeping her safe. As safe as she could. The blonde gazed down at her charge, still and comatose in her arms. Snowflakes had fallen on the girl's red cheeks and collected in the corners of her closed eyes. Her lips were blue. Clare could not go on. *Teresa* could not go on. But to camp out in the open while in this storm was as much a death sentence for Clare as blundering onwards would be. They needed shelter-a trench, a lean-to, a hollow log-*anything* to get Clare out of the cold and beside a roaring fire instead. Whatever Teresa was, she was all that Clare had right now.

Teresa lurched to her feet and veered off the road, venturing into the forest. There had to be something out there. Teresa would hack down a dozen trees with her claymore for salvation if not.

The woman's silver stare sliced through the darkness-but not the thick sleet, and often the deep snow veiled the snare of a tangled root or hazard of a loose rock now that a beaten track was no longer guaranteed. Teresa's balance suffered, along with her haste, until frustration and Clare's shallow breathing delivered a final toll on her patience.

"Hold on," Teresa whispered, smiling faintly down at the girl she cradled, as though the frail thing could hear her. As though nothing was wrong.

Deceivingly lean muscles snapped to attention in the youma slayer's bending legs, and an instant later Teresa was catapulted through the hail of snow and wind, bounding from tree trunk to tree trunk, mini avalanches from shuddering snow-laden branches overhead descending in her wake. No human could compete. No human could see in the night as she could, no human could sniff the air and know two or more deer huddled together in shelter in the east and a potent poisonous fungus fed on a rotting tree stump below, or that there wasn't a campfire lit for miles around. The wet weather dampened the scents, but they were still there, never truly washed clean. It was a great deal like interpreting yoki-there was always a story told, whether the story wanted to be shared or not.

Brimstone. It was thin traces in the billowing wind, the odour waned of its sharpness this distant, but it was still there, never truly washed clean-a signpost in the stormy night. Brimstone was the sallow, sickly-smelling harbinger of the deep earth-not an aroma of the forest. It was strange, exotic-like Teresa.

Teresa turned on her heel, grinding it into the trunk of a tree for a second before changing course, following the source of the winds where the unique scent intensified. It was pungent, perhaps unpleasant to most, but to the desperate blonde it was sweeter than any flower.

The warrior dropped to the forest floor, snow erupting about her as she made an impact with the frozen earth. She was at a hillside; a swell of the forest floor really, trees and other plantlife growing unperturbed on the slopes as they would on level land. Teresa stalked the bottom of the hill, searching for what she suspected-hoped-was there. The scent couldn't lie. She wasn't wrong. She couldn't afford to be.

One arm holding Clare, Teresa sharply swept away old brown branches of pine trees that covered a mouth into the underground. A cave. Shelter. *Salvation*.

Teresa hurried, stooping to enter, unafraid of anything that might have already staked the dry and warm den as theirs. Youma, bears, wolves-Teresa wasn't in the mood to share, nor her blade to discriminate. This place was hers and Clare's now.

It was utter blackness inside-or would be to a human gaze-and eerily still and quiet contrary to the riotous flurry outside. The cave sloped downwards, deeper into the ground, and Teresa was quick to descend, carrying Clare as far as she could from the north's ravaging chill. The slope funnelled the pair into the cave's terminus; a rocky, almost domed interior housed well underground; like a pocket in the belly of the earth. Brimstone wept from the walls, the pong strong at last, and luminance fungus prospered, huge mushroom growths glowing blue stuck amid stalactites and stalagmites on the floor and ceiling, and sucking on the brimstone on the walls. The prolific fungus served to light the room, revealing the cave's final secret. It wasn't silent down here-water bubbled. Hot, steaming water from the depths of the world spewed into the cavern, filling a large natural basin at one corner. It was remarkable. Quite a find. If Teresa had faith in the Gods she might have thanked them. But she felt routine luck and her rare 'gifts' were responsible for this fortune and mercy.

Gently, with a care at odds with her tainted kind, Teresa lay Clare down on the stone floor. She kept the girl away from the mushrooms and the pool, altogether wary of anything that might prey on human frailties. Poisonous spores from the fungus, insects with deadly bite or sting burrowed in their dark filth; and the water-all manner of perils could subsist in the wet and warmth, drawn to it as Teresa and Clare were.

Teresa approached the basin, kneeling at its rim. The water within was clean-with her silver eyes she could see through to the coarse stony bottom. Nevertheless, she drew her claymore, the steel ringing a single pure note in the subterranean chamber. The tip of the blade pierced the pool, the woman plunging the weapon into the water until it scraped the bed of the basin. It wasn't deep, not reaching beyond her sword's hilt, nor was silt or any undesirables roused by her intrusion. Teresa swirled her claymore around for a while longer to be sure of the absence of lurkers, creating whirlpools but kicking up nothing else, and then when satisfied, returned the weapon to its place on her back. With a gloved fingertip she dabbed at the liquid, bringing droplets to her lips. Her darting tongue tested the earth-borne water, its temperature and its flavour. There were minerals in the taste, brought up from the depths of the world. Perhaps not ideal drinking water, but one did not normally imbibe at a hot spring.

Teresa turned from the pool and hurried back to Clare. The girl hadn't improved in the moments the blonde had left her; still was she motionless, still were her eyes closed. Through unconscious concern Teresa impulsively touched Clare's cheek, but with her leather glove she couldn't feel what she wanted to feel. The thought of the buckles deemed too long a hindrance, instead the woman bent over Clare and brought her forehead to the girl's, her flaxen locks cascading down around her face. Clare's fever burned like hot coals, yet a press of Teresa's cheek against one of hers transferred icy pangs into the youma slayer's flesh.

With cold efficiency, though perhaps with a tinge of anxiousness, Teresa rid Clare of her wrappings-the blankets, cloaks, and then her clothing itself stripped and cast aside until just the girl remained. Teresa picked up Clare in her arms, as careful as though she'd shatter if she was jostled even a little, and then carried her over to the pool. Placing all of her hopes on the rumoured curative powers of hot springs, Teresa eased Clare into the heated, steaming water.

Clare whimpered as she broke the surface, curling up slightly, but Teresa persisted until the girl was submerged up to her neck. The blonde balanced the small girl against the lip of the basin, keeping her afloat from behind with an arm around her chest, Clare's head resting against hers outside the pool. With a cupped hand Teresa scooped water to pour over Clare's head, wetting her hair and eliciting more mewling. Whatever the effect of the hot spring, it had to be an improvement over the cold of the cave and the winter weather of the forest.

Teresa lost track of how long she knelt there, bathing Clare. It was if she could do nothing else, her body's motions stuck in a loop, unable to continue with or think of anything else until Clare was awake and alive again. The dependency shouldn't have been a revelation, but faced with it now it came as one. The fates of Teresa and Clare were linked, like the twin goddesses of love. Life without Clare did not bear consideration. Life as Teresa had been before was not a life at all. It was the same for Clare, or at least, Teresa believed it so. Had Teresa abandoned the girl, she would be dead now... and Teresa herself would still be dead inside. They had blessed each other with a different fate, a new life. Teresa and Clare were one and the same.

"Mmmfh..."

Teresa's hand stopped and her breathing hitched, clinging to the tiny, but direct sound. It wasn't a reflexive whimper like those before; it was deliberate, communicative. Conscious. Awake and alive.

"It smells in here."

Teresa smiled. The brimstone. "I'm sorry. I'll make a fire. Don't get out before I have; you'll get a chill."

The blonde tenderly swept her arm away from Clare's chest, leaving her to simmer in the hot spring, and stood up, walking a short distance to the centre of the cavern. There was already a firepit, the ceiling directly above blackened by soot. Teresa and Clare weren't the first cold and weary travellers to seek shelter and solace here. Strange it wasn't more well-known however; that none had staked a claim. Teresa would have expected an entrepreneurial human with business-savvy and coin to have erected an inn nearby, but there wasn't even a clearing from the road to the cave, nor were there any signposts or other heralds marking its existence. Maybe it was too far from the road after all or regarded as too isolated. Who knew human motivations? Whatever the reason, it didn't hurt Teresa and Clare's state of affairs.

Teresa kept smiling while she tore off some thick roots bursting through the cavern's walls for dry tinder. Clare had that affect on her. The girl made the warrior feel her heart beat, feel the life in her veins. Nothing, not even the fury of combat, invigorated Teresa as Clare did. Whatever emotion, good or bad, Clare sparked them all to life inside her.

Teresa unsheathed her claymore and took out a flint, striking the rasping stone against the edge of the blade repeatedly. Sparks flew, again and again, showering the roots she had placed in the firepit. The woman looked over her shoulder, where Clare soaked in the pool. The girl watched her, the glow from the seemingly benign mushrooms permitting her green eyes to see her. She would be alright. Teresa couldn't feel as she did now if Clare wouldn't be.

The sparks ignited the roots and the firepit slowly flourished into life.

* * *

The snow yet fell thick and heavy, gathering atop Teresa's perfectly still head and shoulders. As before, the storm wasn't a bother. However, the woman wouldn't have braved it again without reason. She didn't enjoy being apart from Clare. Feeling that she belonged somewhere, having a place she'd prefer to be-novel concepts for Teresa of the Faint Smile. Throughout her years in the organisation she'd simply travelled endlessly wherever her patented services had been sought. It wasn't wanderlust; it wasn't anything really. Teresa had been a ghost of her former human self, drifting from place to place, battle to battle, with purpose yet with none of her own. Teresa had a home now-that cave. That girl. Wherever Clare happened to be was where Teresa belonged.

The wind brought a familiar scent and the blonde smiled softly, high up in the swaying branches of a pine tree. She'd be home this minute if she could, but sickly young girls needed their hot meals.

The deer bolted underneath Teresa, springing on four nimble legs through the layered snow on the forest floor. There were three. One would suffice.

Teresa jumped from her hidden roost, springing on two legs as nimble if not more so as four, pulling her sword loose as gravity curved her descent. The tip of her claymore punctured the neck of the last deer in the family, continuing through its chest before sticking in the hard earth below, pinning the creature and separating it from its mates. The latter ran on regardless, pace ramped up by fright and the want to survive. All creatures low and high were slaves to their base instincts in the face of their demise; insects to animals, human to youma. Teresa had lived long and killed much-nothing like experience granted such wisdom.

The deer spitted on the youma slayer's blade had given up its life on impact, its blood soaking the snow red. At least this particular death was not for nothing, unlike so many of the others Teresa had witnessed and wrought.

Teresa tugged her sword from the beast, the carcass collapsing in a heap. Then again, since travelling with Clare, no life the blonde had taken had been without warrant. It was hard to discover regret when you lived your life with none.

A short time later the deer roasted above the cavern's campfire, the pleasant appetising aroma blotting out that of the brimstone in the rock to the relief of Clare's nose. The girl, swathed in blankets next to the warm flames, hungrily devoured a shank held between greasy hands, her renewed appetite a pleasing sight to watchful Teresa sitting close by. The blonde barely partook herself; a few small bites plenty for the demon within. It fed primarily on other things.

Teresa relished looking on as Clare indulged her human fancies however, as though living Clare's cravings vicariously. She was so honest and animated, as if eating; that hunger; was testament that she was a living and breathing creature. So full of life. So unlike what Teresa's kind were.

"How did you catch it?" the auburn haired girl asked amid enthusiastic chews.

"I hunted it," Teresa answered while she smiled fondly at Clare's spectacle. "A deer is straightforward prey even in this weather. Compared to a youma."

"With your claymore?"

"Mmm," Teresa nodded indulgently.

"Could you... teach me?"

"I doubt anyone but myself and my sisters could hunt with a sword." Unless what was hunted walked on two legs. The sword was for battle, for killing. Teresa used her claymore to hunt for food because she had nothing else-and because she could. "It takes a talent I'm afraid humans do not have and cannot learn." Or rather, would not choose to learn. The demon inside took much in exchange for its 'talents'.

"Then... could you teach me as much as you could?" Clare persevered. She gripped her venison shank in one hand, like a short blade, and gave it a little practice swing. "I can learn to fight."

"Young girls can't fight as I do," Teresa gently teased and dissuaded. Young girls *could*-the organisation saw it become so. That was one particular fate Teresa did not want Clare to share with her. At any rate, too often humans fought and killed. Not a life for Clare. Teresa would do her fighting for her.

Clare seemed disappointed as she turned the shank back into mere food, taking nibbles.

Teresa sighed. "Very well. The day you can lift my claymore from the ground is the day I teach you," the blonde relented, though with a toying smile and twinkling gaze. She had set an impossible task; Clare was likely none-the-wiser.

Clare bobbed her head eagerly, happily tearing free a mouthful of venison afterwards.

"Good. Eat. You'll need your strength," Teresa joked, tossing more roots onto the fire.

The night passed. Teresa and Clare rested by the light of the fire while the blizzard continued to howl outside; one sleeping; one awake. The repose was slowly becoming more expected to the youma slayer; more natural even. It was helped that she always had her love at her side. She was beginning to wonder if it was not only for Clare's benefit that they lay together in the night. There was peace in the closeness; reassurance that everything was *right*; that Teresa was exactly where she was supposed to be. That sort of surety didn't come easy to most in this world; Teresa knew she was favoured.

More nights passed, more days, until Clare's fever broke and she was pink-cheeked and healthy once again. Yet neither she nor Teresa felt they had to move on. The road didn't beckon as it once had. The cave wasn't an idyllic residence, especially smelling as it did, but it was quite secluded, set apart from the rest of the land and its affairs. Who would find them here? Teresa kept her yoki suppressed to virtual non-existence and there were no tracks to the cave's mouth from the main road. They could forget about the world. This could be theirs, their private place of their own they'd been searching for; not beyond the northern mountain ranges, but *here* and *now*. It wasn't much but they could make something of it. Teresa and Clare were together, just the two of them, each other to rely on, and that was all they had ever really wanted.

Teresa had lost track of how many days they had been off the road, content instead to watch Clare swim around in the hot spring when she wasn't attempting to lift the blonde's weighty claymore, the girl's joyful frolicking more important than dates and times and youma and wars. They did leave the cave sometimes, if only in Teresa's case to find provisions and in Clare's for the fresh air and sunshine that the dark underground could not provide.

Teresa smirked at Clare's latest endeavour to wield her heavy, two-handed sword-this specific try had the girl straddling the blade while striving to heave the handle up from the rocky floor with her pair of small, white-knuckled and red-palmed hands. Clare had managed to move the claymore in the past-a feat in itself-but dragging it and raising it into the air were two distinct actions. Teresa would accept no shortcuts in this, mainly because she didn't want to teach her charge swordsmanship. Defending herself was one thing, learning to kill was quite another. Teresa would not see Clare go down that path as so many other humans had. Clare had suffered enough without that burden added to her slight shoulders and pure heart.

"You almost had it that time," Teresa mocked, earning a bit of a frown from the sweating, straining girl.

Finally Clare released a gasp and let go of the sword's handle, straightening what seemed to be a sore and stiff back. She stood there for a moment, panting, and then in one motion pulled off her short robe over her head, dropping it to the ground. In the next moment she was skipping through the cool air towards the hot spring, swiftly immersing herself in the warm and soothing waters with a small groan. The girl dunked her head underwater briefly, wetting her long hair a darker shade of reddish-brown, and then sighed once again upon emerging, every droplet clinging to her shoulders and neck glistening a myriad of orange hues in the light of the campfire.

Teresa watched everything out of the corner of her eye. If this was to be her life, it was a good life. She left her claymore where it lay on the ground, symbol carved on the blade still masked with a ragged cloth.

"Teresa..." Clare spoke up, apparently watching the youma slayer in kind. She swished her hand along the surface of the pool. "The water... It feels nice."

Teresa paused where she was squatting by the fire, the arm that had been stoking the flames with a charred stick stilling. Of course she was not unaware of the lure of the hot spring. Yet in the days she and Clare had been here, only Clare had soaked herself in the subterranean waters. Of course Teresa was cognisant of this. Of course there was a reason; it was always the same reason. The distinction between 'Claymore' and human could not be ignored-Teresa's body wouldn't let it be. She would forever carry that mark, that tattoo of the monster inside, on her skin-and on her heart.

"Perhaps tomorrow," Teresa said, resuming her poking of the campfire, stirring ashes and wafting embers.

"Teresa..." Clare beckoned softly still.

"I suppose... there's no harm," Teresa replied, to herself as well as to Clare. Here, in this world apart, there was only Clare to judge her in the dark. Only her eyes. Only her that mattered. There was nothing to fear from Clare's sight, nor even the girl's touch. To credit Clare with anything less would do her and her kindness dishonour. While Teresa could not forget the organisation's brand, she too could not forget Clare's love and compassion.

Teresa left the stick in the flames and stood up, undoing the ties of her cloak as she did. The black garment fell from her shoulders into a heap at her feet. The woman's long and nimble fingers went to each buckle of her superfluous armour, and with every one undone, another garment fell. Her gloves. Her bracers. Her pauldron. Her skirt. Her sleeves. Her greaves. Her cuirass. She felt the organisation's last hold on her slip away with every piece. There was nothing to hide. Her life was her own again. What they had taken away she could have once more if she just had the will to move on; if she just had the will to live it.

Lastly Teresa stepped out of her steel sabatons, bare feet on the cold stone. Just her, everything else left behind her. As free as she could ever be.

Teresa walked calmly over the stone floor, a smile for Clare looking on brightly, and hopped into the hot spring, its heat slowly suffusing her body from her feet upwards an awakening. She sank into the basin until it swallowed her, then broke the surface suddenly with a gasp, slinging her sodden flaxen locks and a spray of warm water behind her. Bathing was a simple indulgence, a mundane pleasure, but for Teresa it was as though it were her first time. Something enjoyed for what it was; an understanding that there were things to be enjoyed; that the world wasn't always grey. Clare had been correct-it did feel nice.

Clare beamed at Teresa, obviously pleased that the blonde had accepted her invitation for once-delighting in a simple indulgence. Teresa smiled gently in return, feeling close to the girl. Feeling a little more human.

"Sore?" Teresa remarked with mirth as Clare squirmed in the water, rolling her neck and shoulders.

The slight girl bobbed her auburn head wearily while flexing and relaxing her sinewy arms.

"Want to give up?" the blonde posed deliberately matter-of-factly.

Clare straight away shook her head defiantly, ceasing her writhing and doing her best to shrug off her aches and pains and fatigue. If she only had the body to match that will.

"Here..." Teresa said, moving over to Clare, the water rippling around her waist, the sound tranquil in the quiet cavern, "I can help."

Teresa situated herself behind the tired girl, her hands gently placed on her shoulders. The blonde kept them still a moment, just resting, and then carefully, as one would handle something precious and much more delicate than themselves, she began to knead the muscles found there with thumbs and fingertips. Teresa wasn't certain how her vastly greater strength would translate into Clare's soft flesh; thus the woman was ginger with her touch, almost feather-like pressure to her lest she hurt where she wanted to heal.

Teresa visited Clare's neck for a time, massaging the nape while Clare cooed and lolled her head drowsily, her muscles and the girl herself as malleable as clay under the warrior's nurturing. Then Teresa worked her way down Clare's back, tracing the slightly protruding spine into the heated water. Her thumbs travelled to its end, settling to caress just above the girl's rump, demanding tension to melt away into the sensation, warmth and water. Clare's physiology was almost identical to Teresa's, yet at the core they were as different as creatures could be. Right now however it was the outside that mattered. But for the scarring and Clare's youth, they were not too different in that regard. Two arms, two legs; two eyes, a nose, a mouth; two breasts-one heart.

Teresa draped an arm over Clare's right shoulder, holding the girl to her lightly but with need. The woman's other arm shyly circled around Clare's waist. Teresa bent her head, bringing her cheek in line with Clare's, their damp faces virtually side-by-side. Teresa's breathing was low yet so audible to her ears, as though the only sound that existed inside the cavern. She stroked her cheek against Clare's-just slightly-closing her eyes as she experienced its softness, its heat, its humanity. Tighter and tighter Teresa's arms became, enveloping the slim human girl, squeezing her against the front of her body. It was like embracing life itself.

Teresa turned her head, her pink parted lips rubbing as they willed against the side of Clare's beautiful features, following wherever sensation dictated. She could feel Clare's face getting hot, flushed as though with fever again, however something deep down inside told Teresa that this was different-wanted. The blonde could feel her own temperature rise, her body reacting as it never had before; like the demon's rage and battlelust yet devoid of its hate and violence, just the heat and the yearning, and neither feeling unpleasant or tainted by the youma's filth. Her body needed something, but her tongue had no answers, craving no food or water. All Teresa could do was touch Clare, press against her, as if she desired to be one and the same being.

Teresa ran her fingers of one hand through Clare's reddish-brown hair, nuzzling-all but grinding-her forehead against the top of the locks while her nose took in great sniffs of air, desperate to suffuse her nostrils with the girl's scent. Distantly Teresa's memories came to her aid, reminding her of tales she had picked up and conversations she had overheard among her former sisters. This was... what she was feeling... she wasn't the first. It was a throwback to a sister's past life as a human being. It was snuffed in the majority, as was most of a sister's humanity upon their transformation in the organisation's secret ceremonial chambers, but in some it cropped up in varying degrees and ways. Private rendezvous' with another initiate; your roommate most frequently; consisting of touches and... and kisses to relieve the need. Cries in the night; moans and whispers down the halls. Sometimes in rooms where there were no roommates, a sister's own caresses resorted to for the reprieve.

And then there were the stories of the human 'lovers'. Disposable things; treated as mere pets in nearly every case. Used when needed, cast aside when not. Seen as disgusting among the sisters not so afflicted. Teresa had had no opinion herself, simply noted the occurrences and then dismissed them. She had not been one of the afflicted. She had *thought* she hadn't been.

But it couldn't be just that... *need*. It was more than that. Teresa didn't want Clare as a *pet*. Clare wasn't a lesser being, a human toy. There was no other human that could replace her. Teresa loved Clare; loved her as a human loved another human. Somehow Teresa knew it was love, the purest kind, selfless. There wasn't anything disgusting.

"Teresa..." Clare whispered, clutching the woman's arm that covered her body.

Teresa didn't know what to do. She understood the mechanics of physical affection in some aspects; mainly from the misplaced lust of men that occurred for her kind on occasion; but not enough for even an inkling on how to proceed to break this fever of hers. She was beginning to curse that she hadn't listened to her former sisters' gossip with more interest. All she could do was stroke and touch Clare, luxuriate in the curves and dimples of her body; in the silkiness of her skin and the perfume of her hair, in the beat of the girl's heart against her. Teresa's hands roamed everywhere, clumsy and impotent, delivering a fraction of the sensation and emotion the blonde longed for.

"I told you it was here."

"It's been *years*, alright?"

Teresa ran the bridge of her nose against Clare's ear, following its arch down to the lobe; its shape and softness...

"This... really takes me back. Gods, it still stinks like Hendrick's feet."

"More like your arse."

"Just like when we were brats, huh?"

"Teresa..."

The texture of Clare's lips beneath her fingertips, the tenderness of her small breasts under her palms...

"Except if we're found we won't just get a thrashing from our folks..."

"Stop worrying. You're like a bloody woman. The whole campaign, you-"

"Wait! I think-!"

"Teresa!"

Teresa exploded out of the pool, leaping over Clare and dumping a deluge of splashed water over the girl. The blonde hit the ground on bended knee outside of the basin where her claymore laid discarded, droplets streaming from her to darken the rock at her bare feet. She grabbed her weapon's handle like a lifeline, every prior thought and feeling she'd been captivated by warped to anger at herself for the complete collapse of her guard. The youma slayer had even let the hold she'd had on her yoki that she normally maintained with such unthinking zeal slip she realised, releasing a beacon for any hunting sister or inquisitive youma to hone in on her and Clare's location within at least a mile.

But a second host of unexpected company was a concern for after. Teresa stood up; yoki suppressed with discipline once more; and lifted her claymore from the stone in one well-toned arm as she did. Water dripped and rolled from the tense muscles along her bicep and forearm, some discovering a longer path down the handle and lower edge of her sword before dribbling from the sharp steel point. Teresa and Clare had ignored the world, but the world had come to find them. It had to be faced.

A mix of expressions and emotions flashed across the four men's faces assembled charily before Teresa. The youma slayer was no stranger to the spectacle of lust, surprise, and then horror. It seemed to dawn on them quickly that there was something wrong with the naked woman that had appeared in front of them, the grimaces and stares at the shadow of an abomination typical of humanity... most of humanity.

The intruding men were like any other in these parts; dressed thick in fur and cloak to ward off the north's venom and with hair on their face for a little extra defence. But the glint of steel on each of their belts was not altogether normal. Bandits, was Teresa's first assumption, searching for a hideout. Or perhaps this cave system had always been their hideout. Or it could be they were just men on the road, armed with longswords for their own protection, seeking shelter from the weather as Teresa and Clare had done days ago. There was something uniform about their blades that had the blonde take notice. Same style of hilt, same threading on the handles. Beaten and forged from the same hammer of the same smith? Purchased or stolen at the same time? No. Like Teresa would recognise a sister's claymore as kin to her own, these swords were kin. Soldiers' swords. These men were soldiers but had shed their heralds and maybe their duty as well for whatever motive, the number one being fear of death-survival.

"Claymore..." one breathed, a man with a long scraggily carrot-coloured moustache and beard and just as unkempt hair to match. His back foot scraped on the ground, as if half his body was set on running and the other too scared to risk it.

"Can't be..." another spoke, practically buried in furs including a tall furry brown and black hat. "The decree. There are none here."

"Look with your eyes and see hers! Silver-eyed witch!" a third pointed in panic, his taut face gaunt and dirty with a spattering of dark, poorly grown fuzz. The youngest Teresa decided. "I've never seen one without... without..." He couldn't seem to pull his gaze from Teresa's stomach and nether regions, despite his obviously pained visage craving different.

"I knew this was a bad idea," the last of the four said, appearing resigned to his and his companions' fate. His hair was pale like Teresa's, cropped short despite the cold and with thin growth on his face. "How did you talk me into this? At least we got fed in the army, everyday even. But nooo..."

"Leave," Teresa said casually, the tip of her claymore swaying slightly back towards the path out of the cave. "Now."

"We can't go back! They'll find us!" the youngest of the group squealed. "I'm not going back! They hang deserters!"

Deserters. Likely from Alphonse's forces this far north. Better than bandits... probably. You could never be sure with humans... or what a creature would do for its own survival.

"Look, 'Claymore'," the second man negotiated, speaking the title with a measure of disgust and disbelief. "You're not supposed to be here. Why don't you leave and we'll forget anybody ever saw anybody."

"Yes, begone! Imagine what the army will do to a witch who defies the Twelve Lords!" the youngest mewled, finding his courage with friends at his side. "This is our place and always has been! You can't just come in, and, and-!"

"There's only one of them. Maybe we could..." the first man whispered, this time leaning forward somewhat. His fingertips brushed the pommel of his sword, his eyes like a gambler's watching the dice tumble.

"...Now we're going to be killed in this cave. Where I smoked my first pipe..." the last deserter remarked, never ceasing his cynical prattle, caught in a conversation with himself.

"Let's not lose our heads," the negotiator said quickly, earning a derisive snort from the cynic. Perhaps the latter listened to only the worst bits of his compatriots' talk. "We..." He trailed off all of a sudden, and Teresa's eyes narrowed. "You... You have... You're not alone..."

"Is that a child?" the first man frowned, looking behind Teresa where the negotiator was enthralled. "The Claymore has...!"

"Unhand that girl, witch," the negotiator demanded, his hard tone taking an abrupt turn from the diplomatic. "I don't know what vile purpose had you snatch her, but we'll see her returned to her rightful folk, I swear it."

"Evil, just as evil as youma! The Lords were right, Gods preserve them!"

"I knew we couldn't trust the witches... I knew it... no one listened..."

"N-No, I'm... it's-" Clare stammered in the hot spring, struggling to find her words.

"I said unhand her!" the negotiator yelled, drawing his sword. A second ring of steel resounded an instant after, the first man-the gambler-choosing to throw his fate in with his friend's.

Teresa reacted. The negotiator's sword was smashed aside, its point drilling into the stone and lodging there, pinning the man's swordarm with it. It left him completely open, and Teresa didn't hesitate. She didn't negotiate.

The blonde's claymore cut through the deserter from right lower rib to left shoulder, wringing a horrified scream from him until the blood in his throat choked his voice. Teresa's blade continued on as he fell, cleaving the head from the gambler's body before he could do little more than brandish his longsword. The gambler dropped to his knees, still holding his ineffectual weapon in one loosening fist, and then teetered to one side, his blood spilling from his neck like water from a toppled jug.

The youngest of the group shrieked over and over and then turned and fled, his cries filling the cave and seeming to echo long after he had escaped. The cynic cowered, mumbling frantically to himself curled up on his knees with hands over his head, as if hiding from the reality in front of him would save him from it. But he had nothing to fear from Teresa, nor had the man that she had let go. Teresa was not a murderer.

Teresa turned back to the basin and Clare. She bent over the pool and saw her reflection streaked with the red blood of those she had slain. She had become used to the colour, like that of youma's purple shade. The image bothered her, as did the cynic's hysterical mumbling behind her. Humans died every day, but...

Teresa dipped her hands in the water, including the claymore in her right. The blood on both her hands and her blade settled on the surface, clouding it, and floated over her reflection and Clare's nearby. She could have disarmed the men. Could have talked them down, scared them off; acted like the bogeyman they believed her to be from their tales and rumours-not proved to be the monster. Teresa had shown them no mercy, waiting for the opportunity to kill, to stop them from separating her from Clare. It had been... nothing to her. Human lives had readily been meaningless to the blonde, but it didn't sit right this time. One of those dead men could have been another Clare, maybe both of them. They had thought they were protecting a human child; they had acted to defend her. Teresa hadn't given them a chance to see their error, only the chance to fatally learn that Clare belonged with her.

Teresa glanced at Clare's reflection in the pool, the blood distorting it, patches of misty crimson slowly churning as they polluted the spring. Was this infatuation? Was she like those other sisters, possessive of their human lover; as property to them? Was she any better to keep and raise Clare than the humans? ...Is that what she wanted? To raise Clare as her... what? Her own? Had Josel spoke truth? Was Teresa to be lumped in with the youma-with the youma that had claimed Clare as their chattel before, her outward beauty the only dissimilarity? Had she suffered a different sort of awakening, but no shorter a fall from grace?

"We're leaving," Teresa said to Clare, pulling her hands and claymore from the water, distorting its visions, and lifting her head to look the human girl in the face. Clare looked... alright. Alright with the two men killed in front of her eyes. "Now."

* * *

The road's familiarity was a quiet comfort, inviting Teresa as it always did with promises to take her away from where she had been; erasing her touch on the places behind her but for the youma she had slain. Lately its stretches had offered a more enticing escape, laden with hope that the cycle would end one day, that she'd discover a place she wouldn't want to leave behind-where instead the road would be left. For the moment simple escape sufficed.

The woman hadn't been able to look at the bodies in the cave. She'd blocked out the survivor's ramblings, abandoned him to them... or perhaps she'd fled the cave in the vein of the lucky youngling. The place was haunted now, tainted. Teresa needed it to be erased. Only there were no youma bodies back there; just too red blood and a gibbering madman that had seen a monster.

Teresa had said nothing since. She could tell Clare sensed something was amiss; however the girl respected the blonde favouring silence. Clare took too great an inspiration from her. Clare allowed herself to be shaped, defined, by Teresa too much. How could the pure stay pure when led by the impure? That was what Teresa had always been-by definition a 'Claymore' was bred for her taint. One wouldn't leave a child to be raised in company of criminals, or wild wolves, and expect the child to turn out any different. Teresa wasn't immoral or feral to the point where that she couldn't still realise that... mercifully.

Clare wouldn't understand. But that was Teresa's fault, twisting everything so that Clare would know only her, need and want *only* *her*. It hadn't been the warrior's intention, at least not consciously; however she had permitted it to happen. She had taken pleasure in it; indeed, it still caused a pleasant warmth inside that someone cared about what happened to her beyond her ability to swing a sword. Teresa had placed her own desires above Clare's; her own fulfilment *first*. She had been blinded by it, blinded by the cold world of wicked youma and bitter humans, thinking she could preserve something good and pure. But it had been for herself. So she'd have something good and pure, so her heart would beat again, so the life she'd had stolen long ago could be lived. Teresa would *not* steal Clare's life.

Teresa was always sure of herself... and she was sure of this. It was what the blonde should have done months ago. It wasn't like last time, dumping Clare in that doomed village before the path of pillaging bandits. This time Teresa cared. Truly cared and understood what it *was* to care. With the right human family Clare would have a chance to grow up normal. Somewhere quiet, where wars and monsters and depravity wouldn't find her. She could grow up and forget this life on the road. Forget the swords, and the blood and the death, and... Teresa. *This* was what love was. It was an uplifting revelation and soul-destroying all the same.

Teresa looked ahead at the road that days prior had promised so much. Now it held a single promise-an end, a home, just not for her.

Hours went by. A day. Night fell and the sun rose again. And Teresa walked the empty, lonely road, the time flowing so much slower than it had in the cave. She stopped when Clare's faltering footsteps bid, or when the path dimmed too much for human sight. Teresa was not without compassion.

On some other day, during some other hour, the youma slayer heard the tattoo before Clare did, felt the subtle vibration of each solid thunk through the earth. Clare perked up to the sound when they were closer, looking to Teresa for guidance as usual, searching the woman's face for a hint of possible danger ahead. Teresa kept her hood up.

Through the forest's pillars a man split log segments on a hewed tree trunk, his axe plummeting as fast as he could position another log in its way. He was tall, well-muscled probably from his woodman's toil, though a gut poked at his simple peasant clothes. As most males did in the north, he wore thick facial hair-a full curly beard and moustache-and from underneath his woollen cap more black curls spilled. Teresa guessed his age at somewhere in the fifties, but she had been wrong before. Age had less importance on the ageless.

Further through the trees, well separated from the road, peeked a log cabin, presumably the woodsman's. 'Cabin' wasn't quite worthy. It was a two-storey construction, large enough for a family, complete with glass windows albeit warped, and shutters to help stem the cold. A stone chimney stack protruded from the slanted roof. If the man was solely responsible for the build it was an impressive feat. A human could live comfortably in there, secreted away in the woods. They could live peacefully.

Teresa stopped at the narrow, rough, barely-there, dirt track that led from the road to the house, in line of sight of the woodsman. She waited for him to notice her and Clare, while the latter glanced uncertainly between the blonde's hooded visage and the burly man.

The woodsman's latest overhead axe swing hitched for an instant, the tattoo with it, before he resumed chopping firewood as if the two strangers at the edge of his property hadn't come to his attention. It was a good show, but to a swordswoman's sharp gaze it was futile pretence. Teresa approached, Clare following.

The man held his axe in one hand, needing the strength of just a single arm to cut the kindling while the other sorted the result. The axe itself was an uncomplicated affair of a dark wooden haft; worn smooth from use; and a single arced blade. It was nothing fancy. A tool. Unlike the sword, the axe hadn't found its first use in punching through armour links and plates or executing those deserving and undeserving. The axe had been meant for *this* honest labour. In the right hands it was only a threat to trees, severing limbs still but never drawing a drop of blood.

The woodsman kept up with his work despite Teresa and Clare's closing proximity, however the youma slayer saw his dark eyes regard them for a moment as he picked up another log. He took in the sword at Teresa's back, the shadows within her hood, and Clare at her side all in a single instant. "If you've come to take what you want, you're welcome to it," he eventually spoke, his voice gruff behind his beard and a little breathless, no doubt from his work. "Whatever you're after, we don't have it." The woodsman grunted slightly as he split the log, brushing the two halves aside into a waiting pile. "Otherwise we have some to spare for you and the young 'un this evening. For your bellies and your heads."

Teresa glanced towards the house. A large, frumpy older woman in a faded blue dress stood wringing her hands in one of the ground floor windows, her expression through the twisted and bubbled glass anxious. The man's wife; the sum of the 'we'.

"Do you get many visitors?" Teresa asked.

"A trader drops by once in a spell. Checks in on us," the woodsman said, setting up yet another log. "Some of the army past a few days ago. Then you." He split the log with a loud thud, burying part of the axe head in the tree trunk below. "Busy season."

Teresa wondered if the man had made a joke. "Bandits? Highwaymen?" she asked further, recalling his earlier challenge.

"Near the cities, even in this cold. Not here." The woodsman eyed Teresa and her claymore again, toil stopping a moment. "Not yet." Another log, another look, this time at Clare. "Never seen a child brigand before, though. Wouldn't be surprised."

Teresa listened to the man hack more wood, her gaze someplace else. "It's just you and the woman?"

The woodsman grunted, breath fogging the air, focused on the next log.

Teresa lowered her cowl. The woodsman's axe stuck in the log, lodged in splinters midway down the incomplete divide; a failed chop. He scowled and grunted again, slapping the sole of his boot against the ruptured log to free his blade. Had he heard the news of Alphonse's ban on Claymore?

"Claymore," the woodsman muttered, prising apart the butchered log with one hand and his boot keeping the other half still. He snorted. "Busy season."

"Has your hospitality changed?"

The man mumbled grumpily, but shook his head. "Never seen a youma. Maybe that's saying something about Claymore." He snuck another look at Teresa's sword, leaving the woman pondering if that was a compliment.

"Are you in the habit of helping strangers?" Teresa inquired, sparing a glance his wife's way. She seemed no more placated than earlier, despite the lack of bloodshed. Perhaps she was of a different opinion on Claymore.

"Strangers, no." The man threw the axe head first in the tree trunk and straightened his back, the bones cracking. He looked upon Clare openly, with some kind of emotion in his eyes. "But children... yes."

"We accept your hospitality," Teresa said.

* * *

"We've... we've always wanted children. A daughter," Trudy stammered, staring at Clare with almost saucer-like eyes. She was forever on edge, seeming ready to duck aside and cower with a moment's warning. But maybe Teresa, a Claymore, was what made her so.

Abel grunted from around his smoking pipe in what Teresa believed was agreement. "We'll treat her like she's ours. No different."

"Y-Yes," the woodsman's wife anxiously chimed in, her pudgy hands balling up the apron she wore over her dress. "Like she's ours." Her gaze darted between her husband and Clare, sometimes lingering on Teresa. It didn't linger for long.

Teresa couldn't look at Clare, but she felt the girl's dumbfounded stare on her. Clare was in a state of shock. This wasn't abandonment though. It wasn't. This was right. This was compassion. Abel and Trudy Devenyor were the first human family Teresa had come across since the cave, since her decision, but she hadn't chosen them without thought and care. They were good people; rare gems. They reminded Teresa of the peasant folk that had often engaged her service, though until now she hadn't reflected on the people she had saved from the scourge of youma. No doubt there had been many good people among them. People that just wished for simple lives; had simple dreams. Worth saving.

The Devenyor's had been eager to take Clare on. An orphan girl in the company of a Claymore-perhaps any human family would have found the sympathy to accept custody, if just to spare the child from a monster's clutches. They had the right of it. A human, let alone a young girl, didn't belong at a sister's side. Clare's own kind should clothe and feed her, raise and defend her. It wasn't Teresa's role. It wasn't in her kind's nature.

"No... Teresa..." Clare whispered, discovering her voice, albeit only just.

"Now girl, there's no place for a child with a Claymore," Abel lectured gruffly, laying a calloused hand on the slight girl's shoulder, already the father figure. "Dangerous. Claymore can't be looking after children, with what they do."

"You'll fit in, dear..." Trudy added, forcing a smile after another tremulous look towards Teresa. "You'll find your place."

"*No*!" Clare cried, throwing off Abel's grasp with a slap of her hand and roll of her shoulder. She ran up to Teresa and stood directly in front of her, chin raised and eyes demanding, but the blonde couldn't meet those green orbs.

"...It's only for a short while," Teresa lied. It broke her inside to utter, but the lies rolled from her tongue as blood from an open wound. A survival instinct. "I'll be back. One day."

"Let me hold your sword!" Clare persisted, her tone becoming more frantic. "I can do it this time! I can do it!"

"I need to take care of our pursuers. You remember them," Teresa said, ignoring the human girl begging before her. "I'll be back." She smiled, finally lowering her silver gaze to Clare. The smile was false, as with her words. Teresa's face was like a doll's; hollow expression, barren emotion. "The sword was never meant for you."

"I'll make you supper, Clare. My, it got late!" Trudy rambled, bustling over to the cabin's kitchen to obviously flee the uncomfortable scene.

"Be best if you go," Abel suggested, chewing on the end of his pipe. "Good journey to you, Claymore."

Teresa lifted her arm, the energy it took belying the act, and touched the crown of Clare's head, sifting her fingers through the reddish-brown locks. The woman felt sluggish; wounded.

Clare stared up at her still, disbelieving. She blinked those big eyes and tears split in a torrent, as if a stressed dam had suddenly succumbed.

Teresa traced her hand from the top of Clare's head down to her cheek, wanting the softness, the silkiness, the warmth, but feeling none of it through her black leather glove. It was better that way. She opened her mouth to lie again, to deliver empty promises, however they wouldn't come anymore. It was no longer her responsibility to placate, to comfort. Or maybe Teresa simply didn't want to defile this final memory with Clare. The blonde owed Clare much. Letting her go was the greatest gift Teresa could give in gratitude-the greatest love she could show.

Teresa briskly turned and stomped out of the cabin, her footsteps loud on the wooden floors. Through the door and into the moonlit night and cruel winter she marched, not slowing, not looking behind her-just walking through the snow. Back on the road.

For the first time Teresa felt the cold around her. It seeped into her flesh; bit at her bones. She kept walking. She didn't know where she was heading. North was her bearing, but her legs were merely going through the motions. Teresa wondered what now. Keep going north, beyond the mountains where 'Claymore' were rumoured not to exist? And... what after? Find her place to live quietly, by herself? For what reason?

Teresa felt lost. The road held no more promises. She felt even emptier than she had with the organisation. Maybe she should return to doing what she was created for-killing youma, only freelance, out with the authority of the organisation. A return to wandering. But she already knew what in her wandering she would be searching for-she had found it after all, and it was back over her shoulder, weeping in a log cabin in the forest. Destroying youma, earning coin, being the doll; albeit with her strings cut; possessed no appeal.

Thoughts streamed through Teresa's head like the gently drifting snowflakes around her while her feet took her far away. She couldn't contemplate staying nearby Clare. She couldn't consider observing her live from afar, watching her grow... and forget about the months their lives had been tied together as one. Even as a silent guardian, a distant defender, the temptation for more would be too much. Visits over the years were out of the question; they'd be bright sparks to invigorate her otherwise muted existence, but again, even if the blonde kept her appearance to the shadows of Clare's life, Teresa couldn't trust herself. Clare had opened her eyes along with her heart. Teresa couldn't just close either again. She would remain the walking wounded, the doll without her strings and without a stage.

Teresa stopped suddenly in the middle of the road. The snow started to gather on her shoulders, tenderly enveloping her. She looked up at the falling white specks, at the vast darkness they came from, at the twinkling pinpricks in the black velvet. She had known the outcome of her decision to release Clare from the second it had been made. Teresa had started down this road because of Clare. Without her, not a single step onward had meaning. The road had ended. Teresa would wait for her sisters to do what they had tried to do when she had begun this path-she would wait for judgment. This sojourn had been... enlightening. But it was time for Teresa to have her end.

Teresa heard it on the wind, carried to her through the chill and night, scattering snowflakes into flurries with its passing echo. No one else this distant from the source would have been able to pick it up-only a sister; a Claymore. It was a voice. A call. A scream. It was a purpose.

Teresa turned swiftly, back in the direction she had come from, and bound through the darkness, the treetops her stepping stones. The expanse she had walked was gobbled up in seconds through her supernatural feat, propelling an almost invisible black silhouette against a night's sky.

The woman landed heavily in front of the Devenyor cabin, hurling dirt and snow from the crater she produced. Teresa surged forward, a single rap on the house's door with her shoulder splintering the log workmanship and shattering the topmost hinge. Trudy Devenyor was in the foyer, at the foot of the stairs to the second floor, peering restlessly up the flight. She started at the eruption, showered with flecks of wood that stuck in her bird's nest of brown hair.

Before Trudy could emit a sound Teresa had pushed past her, moving with speed no human could equal, leaping up the whole staircase without touching a single step. She followed her ears. She followed the voice. She followed her heart.

Another door stood in her way-blown to firewood by her coming. The portal revealed a simple upstairs bedroom; wooden bed, straw mattress, crudely woven sheets. Abel on the bed, on top of Clare.

The human male looked over his shoulder at the disturbance, at Teresa, his huge fists crushing Clare's desperately flailing wrists. Everything about him looked massive in comparison to the girl. A giant. A monster. What he was doing was antithesis to everything Teresa had felt herself for Clare. *This* was the perversion. *This* was sin. There was no tenderness in his dark eyes; no love. Just lust and cruelty. Just the monster.

"You cam-"

The claymore cut without hesitation. Strong biceps, mammoth gut; skin, flesh, and bone; were severed with the single chop, the might of steel the great equaliser. Half of Abel stayed on the bed. The other half fell on the floor.

"Teresa...!" Clare gasped, shaking off the maimed arms and running to the blonde warrior and throwing her arms around her. Teresa embraced her, gazing down with a face that didn't belong to a doll.

Teresa breathed easier when she saw Clare still wore her clothes as did what was left of Abel. She didn't shy away from looking at the man. His blood was red. Not a youma, but still a beast. It didn't faze Teresa in the slightest. The evil of humanity hid better than any youma could hope to.

Teresa ushered Clare slowly down the stairs. There were speckles of blood on Clare's face; somehow they were a welcome colour to her cheeks.

Trudy screeched at the sight of them; the dripping blood on Teresa's bared claymore in her right hand leaving little to the imagination. "What have you done?" she howled, knees buckling. "How *could* you? A *Claymore*!"

Teresa's face was grim as she walked down the last steps. Abel's wife had *known*. She had allowed his evil; had allowed his abuse of Clare; had let Teresa blindly give up the girl to his deviant desires. Trudy had done nothing to stop any of it. She was not innocent.

Teresa raised her sword, prompting Trudy to screech once more and recoil in fear. Then the blonde felt Clare squeeze her, before moving to stand in her path. Clare shook her head.

Teresa blinked and lowered her claymore, instead flicking it sharply with a turn of her wrist, shedding the excess blood adhering to the edge, before sheathing it. She smiled. Clare smiled back. Teresa *understood*. *Clare* was her humanity. Clare didn't look to her for guidance; Clare guided *Teresa*. Clare was her measure of what was right and just and wrong and wicked. Teresa only needed to pay attention. Teresa wasn't damning Clare; Clare was saving her. Ultimately no innocent child sought the companionship of an irredeemable monster.

Teresa walked past Trudy with Clare in tow, deserting the widow where she sat on the floor. "How will I live...?" she whimpered as the blonde brushed by, shaken by the demise of her husband. She could only see the loss of a provider, despite his malicious spirit. "How will I go on without him? What will I do now?"

"You'll find your reason," Teresa said before she left the cabin. She looked at Clare on the threshold, the girl beaming in response. "Or it will find you."

* * *

The End... for now

Author's ramblings:

The fluff parts probably would have been better had Teresa and Clare been in a tropical clime with some stereotypical oasis and a waterfall, but I had them stuck in the snowy north already so had to make do. Originally this was meant to be solely some fluff piece to show how close Teresa and Clare had become without action to cloud it, but I just couldn't flesh it out enough with solely fluff material. I hope it turned out okay anyway!


	6. Her Hero

Her Hero - By Kirika

* * *

Teresa and Clare are back for more! I'm starting to wrap up this series, probably only one or two instalments remain. Sorry it took ages. It's tough being an adult with adult problems!

- Kirika

* * *

The streets teemed with humanity. Merchants still hawked their wares behind makeshift stalls, the beggars still cluttered underfoot, and the peasantry still cluttered everywhere else. Minoc was still a city for the time being. A city with life. Perhaps if one did not look too closely at the population's worried faces, didn't notice the tense soldiers within the crowds, didn't listen to the snippets of nervous conversation regarding what was outside Minoc's high walls and what might await those huddled within, one might think it was a city with a future.

Minoc was under siege. The South had come to the North at last.

The southern cities had allied, banding together to drive into Alphonse as a singular legion, a stern answer to the North's unprovoked invasion into central Toulouse. Teresa had seen many different banners beyond the walls. From the western lands of Lautrec to the Organisation's home in eastern Staff, city states had rallied to the threat. Even Mucha in the deep south past the Zakol Mountains, arguably the most protected from Alphonse's armies and ambition, was represented. Minoc, the first major Alphonse city in the Southern Alliance's path, close to border with Toulouse, was doomed.

Produce traders extorted huge sums for their supplies, preying on the fears of the people, while some other predatory vendors, feeling crafty, hoarded their inventory for the coming weeks and months, anticipating the demand of a starving populace and the price that could be enforced during a siege. But the smartest sold what they could and saved only what they would consume themselves, before the garrison requisitioned their supplies for the city's stores, and before food and drink became worthless and weaponry the sole appetite for the people. Minoc would be swallowed whole. Its walls were thick and high, but the garrison was nowhere near enough to hold the South back. There would be no protracted siege, no risk of starvation, just the risk of being slaughtered. With such a superior force outside the gates, the assault would start any day now. The siege towers were nearing completion and the battering rams were prepared. In Minoc's high spots Teresa could already catch sight of a few of the finished wooden siege engines gathering snow and looming over the ramparts. No time for a relief force to arrive. No chance to muster much defence at all.

Teresa of the Faint Smile wasn't supposed to be here. She should have moved on weeks ago. She shouldn't have been caught up in these human politics. But the youma slayer travelled with one of those humans in her care. All of that human's concerns were her own. And all of her frailties.

Teresa weaved through the streets, mingling with the crowd, just another hooded figure hiding from the bitter northern cold. If the city wasn't about to fall she could have concealed herself among its inhabitants for some time, she imagined.

The blonde's cloak caught on something, and her silver eyes peered from the depths of her cowl down at a muddy hand clinging to the hem. Before the filthy vagrant sitting in the muddy snow at her feet could open his mouth, Teresa tugged her cloak loose and continued onwards.

Teresa could have concealed herself, however remaining any longer than necessary in this base human warren would have been distasteful.

A few minutes later Teresa saw the familiar sign over the heads of the rabble; a crude drawing of a pestle resting within a mortar. It was painted on a wooden board with its fair share of icicles, hung high on one of the many dilapidated buildings in the district. From the outside 'The Cure' didn't appear as if it was a home to any such thing, but Teresa had made diligent enquiries upon first arriving in Minoc many days ago. Ulgi's cures were the most effective in the city.

Teresa walked past two men with swords on their belts loitering at the doorstep-paid guards, by the look of them-and entered the apothecary's store, the door creaking on its hinges followed by the floorboards beneath her steel boots. The Cure was dark and dingy inside, little light getting in through the warped glass windows caked with what looked like years worth of frost and muck. And then the odour hit. All manner of scents bombarded the nose, from the strong and sharp to the downright rotten and pungent. Cuttings from bizarre plants and bowls filled with unpleasant pastes sat on shelves behind the store counter-a counter blotted with a myriad repellent stains and smears, permanent character seeped right into the wood grain.

Despite the off-putting atmosphere the place exuded Teresa was not Ulgi's only customer. Rich mixed with poor in the queue in front of the counter; well-dressed nobles and successful merchants with perfumed handkerchiefs held under their nostrils brushing shoulders with ragged farmers and labourers, the last group no doubt used to their own stench to be bothered by The Cure's. It was always busy when Teresa came. Perhaps the siege had people stocking up on remedies. Or perhaps it was simply Ulgi's reputation as a healer.

Teresa joined them, the shadowy figure with a blade on her back the odd one out at the end of the line. But no one cared. No one even looked her way. Minoc was a city of self, like any other human settlement. The larger a place grew, the less people living within thought about the others beside them.

"*I* heard there have been mass desertions," the aristocrat in front of Teresa was saying, his shrill voice slightly muffled by the handkerchief he had clasped over half his face. "For what reason no one can tell me. There's a new story with every new face I talk to. But what they-and I-are certain of is that the army is a barely at half strength, with more abandoning their posts every day! Traitors, say I! Well, if these deserters should come back looking for their homes *here* only the noose will welcome them!"

"I was talking to Belrund the other day; you know him, the tailor with those silks? Fine indeed, though he charges as if he spun it himself! This siege is playing havoc with his imports, let me tell you," the aristocrat's equally dapper companion said, adding his own high voice behind cloth to the conversation. He would sometimes rub at his crotch with his other hand, almost unconsciously. "He told me General Thornir is turning his offensive into a final stand in Graadenhold, but the man only held half the city, and had no hope of holding what he has, his soldiers ragged and routing! Karesia had been virtually cowed and now this?! The Toulouse campaign is in shambles!"

"And now look what we have, those pompous Toulouse degenerates at our very gates! Heads will roll once we break this siege."

"Reinforcements are due to arrive? I have heard nothing..."

"Of course they must be! This is Minoc! If we fall Alphonse falls! Surely the Lords realise that! *These* soldiers on their way best not be cowards like those-hu-hah!-'fighting' in the south!"

Teresa listened. Not because she wanted to, but because there was no avoiding it. Not here, not outside in the streets-it was the same words on everyone's lips. Alphonse's formerly relentless invasion force inexplicably scuttled from within, General Thornir's martial dominance in the south all but yanked from beneath his feet, reduced to a desperate losing position inside Graadenhold, stuck between its walls and Toulouse retribution. The news had reached Minoc just before the Southern Alliance did; the army's appearance the other topic keeping tongues wagging in every corner of the city. It had come within marching distance to Minoc so swiftly, warning of the approach arriving a scant day or two before the city was under siege, that many who had tried to flee were cut off, left stewing with the slow, the stupid, and the steadfast inside the walls today. Only those who had taken nothing, abandoning Minoc straight away had had any chance of getting out.

How a legion of its scale had slipped into Alphonse's borders without sooner alarm reaching the northerners still had the people chattering. The northerners thought their southern neighbours soft, too used to warm weather to brave the snow and ice. Teresa had no such prejudices. If the warrior had to guess, the Southern Alliance had marched through the deserted mountains, through the lonely forests, where the clinking of arms and armour and the racket of wagons and camp followers had been swallowed up along with obvious signs of their incursion. No doubt the strategy had cost the bold Toulouse commanders dozens upon dozens of soldiers, slain by sickness and the cold and the predictable misfortune that trudging through rugged terrain sooner or later befell all travellers. But here Toulouse's allied army was now, with a northern city ripe for the plucking. Probably the only factor that hadn't seen the soldiers hammering at the gates and throwing themselves over the walls on that first day under siege was the need for rest and recovery following that brutal march.

"I wish I hadn't ran *into* the city," an unkempt man spoke to his nodding friend; farmers by their poor work clothes, their northerner constitutions likely the only reason they hadn't frozen to death clad in those thin rags. They walked away from the counter holding their medicines-small packages from their small pay. "My farm is probably stripped. I bet they killed my pigs. At least my family isn't out ther-"

"Watch for your betters, peasant!" one of the nobles squawked; taking profuse umbrage at being brushed against as the farmers walked past. "Your kind of filth is difficult to wash off."

The farmer who had committed the apparently grave insult stopped, clenching his jaw a moment, while his friend tugged on his arm to just keep moving. "You're right, my Lord," he then spoke, shrugging off his companion's urgings, "you almost certainly never worked a real day in your life to know how difficult it is."

"Ohhh~!" the other aristocrat cooed, sharing a mocking look with the first, the effect only somewhat cheapened by his habitual scratching between his legs. "This one has a mouth on him!"

"Yes, he does. It won't help him in the coming days, I'm afraid." The nobleman turned his head back to glare at the farmer. "You and your wretched lot will be the first to die if any southern barbarians breach the city. Your kind always are."

"Like rats in-No, no... Like the *pigs* you lie with!" the second noble chortled.

"Yeah," the farmer said, stony-faced amid the screeching laughter. "I'm sure you'll be spared, my Lord."

"Blue blood is not so easily spilt, my smelly friend," the first aristocrat replied, smiling with many teeth. "Unlike yours." With that, he struck the farmer across with face with the back of his velvet-gloved hand, before childishly bringing it down, slapping the man's medicine package out of his grasp.

"Oh dear," the second aristocrat remarked as he ground the package into a dark green slime on the floorboards beneath his heel.

The farmer looked down at the ruined remedy with big, staring eyes. There was blood on his lip, but he only seemed to care about the medicine he had just purchased. "That was for... She *needed*...!" He roared and launched himself at the nearest nobleman, his rough and callused hands effortlessly closing around a high collar and white lace-and the thin neck under it all.

"Yuld, no!" the other farmer howled while the rest of the apothecary store stopped to witness the spectacle, calls to cease or take it outside coming from behind the counter.

"H-Help! Help! Guards!" shrieked the lord that still could, quickly divorcing himself from his cohort and the violence that was being plied upon him. "Murder! Murder!"

The armed men Teresa had seen waiting outside burst in, blades bared. They took one look at the farmer choking the life out of the nobleman and responded rapidly. After all, it was their stipend that was being threatened. One guard moved to stand in front of the still shrieking lord whilst the other ran up behind the farmer, clubbing him over the back of the head with his sword hilt. The blow was more than enough to loosen the farmer's murderous grip and knock him into a daze, his knees wobbling.

"K-Kill him..." the asphyxiating aristocrat managed to wheeze, feebly clawing at his attacker's large hands. "Kill him!"

His bodyguard obliged. The swordsman rained more blows down on the farmer's head, beating him to his knees, and then to the floor while the lord scrambled away, rubbing his neck. He didn't stop until the peasant was face down, his hair matted with blood and half his skull had sunken into the other half.

"You... you really killed him..." the dead farmer's acquaintance gasped, his eyes glued to the gruesome scene.

"Be thankful you are not lying next to him!" the half-choked aristocrat spat. He looked at the corpse and sniffed, pulling a fresh handkerchief from inside his sleeve.

"I detest coming to this district," the other aristocrat bemoaned. "Should we alert the city guard?"

"Why bother?" said the first nobleman from behind his handkerchief. "My man here was well within his and my rights to act." He turned, looking from one gawking customer to the next. They dropped their eyes before meeting his. "And there were no witnesses that I can see." When his gaze came to Teresa he lingered a moment longer than he had for the others, straining to plunder the depths of her cowl for her eyes. Unsuccessful, though identifying no outward antagonism from the stoic figure Teresa cut, the nobleman moved on-but not before a wary glance at the long handle of her claymore protruding past her shoulder.

"What about this one?"

The nobleman looked to where his companion pointed, at the surviving farmer.

The peasant cringed under the sudden barrage of eyes, shrinking back as if he wanted to become one with the woodwork. "I... I swear to the Gods I didn't see anything, m'Lords...!"

The nobleman that had started the whole fatal disturbance smiled thinly. "No doubt, my good man. There is no doubt in my mind that you didn't." He began to turn from him, and then stopped, as if reconsidering. It was all pretend. "Still... you'd want to make sure with your own eyes that your friend receives a decent burial, yes? I think it best if our men take you in hand."

"N-No..." the farmer gasped as one of the burly bodyguards advanced on him. "No! Please!" His wailing continued as he was dragged by his arms through the store towards the door, scratching at the air and heels battering against the floor.

"I guess we ain't leaving this 'ere then?" the remaining bodyguard commented, gesturing with this sword tip at the dead body.

"I think not. To the gutter with this trash, where it belongs," the aristocrat commanded. He took one last look at the man he had had murdered and sniffed into his handkerchief, before striding to the exit.

His noble cohort quickly followed behind him after his own parting glance, handkerchief likewise over his face while rubbing at his crotch yet again. "I didn't get my cream...!" he could be heard grumbling until the door swung closed.

The bodyguard unleashed some colourful language under his breath once left by himself with the task of carrying the carcass out. He sheathed his blade and seized the bludgeoned farmer by his ankles, pulling him outside the building, heedless of the thick fresh blood smear he produced in his wake.

The smell of it hung thick in the air. Teresa could taste the blood in her mouth, that unmistakable iron tang. The demon inside her stirred, but the blonde swordswoman kept her vicious passenger on a strict leash-always had-and it was effortless to rein the brute in. She had never sought its gifts, never needed them-not until the Organisation had turned on her... and Priscilla. The only aspect Teresa had taken from the beast, besides a latent physical prowess, was the passive ability to read the yoki of the others like her. There was no such aura about humans, however Teresa hadn't needed to be able to read their intentions to know what had been coming for the two peasants. The gutter would have two corpses before the sun went down.

None of it surprised Teresa. She had seen a lifetime of 'humanity'. Youma were minor predators upon humankind against humankind itself. Teresa could have stepped in between the nobles and the peasants. She could have made herself a part of the situation, altered it, and prevented the death and the one to follow. But why should she? The men would have died regardless sooner or later, victims of another trivial encounter, another pointless argument with a neighbour, a friend; anyone. Teresa's blade could not alter the anger between the humans, could not prevent the selfishness and contempt that was ingrained in them for their fellows. It had been this way since she had been a sister; she would slay the monsters in their midst, but only those obvious ones; the ones with fangs and claws, not false smiles and hollow words. Humanity would not change. They would never rise to anything greater. And, like when Teresa had been a sister, it was not for her to interfere. Too often she had already. Too quick to weigh in on unfamiliar human affairs, too quick to cut down those she thought had earned it. Why stain her claymore with more red blood and hoist more lives on her shoulders when she could choose not to? Her claymore should stay in its sheath. For Clare it cut, for one human only, one deserving, and no other. Let the rest destroy themselves-they would do a fine job of it without her supplementing the tally.

"Devin! Clean it up!" Ulgi's raspy voice screeched from behind the counter.

With that, it was business as normal again. The queue reformed, almost all of the customers preferring to stay at the site of a callous murder rather than be put out for their apothecary needs. Meanwhile Devin, the young boy apprenticing under Ulgi, came out with a mop and bucket.

Teresa observed him as he casually dropped the bucket of cloudy water to the floor and began slopping a frayed mop over the blood trail, all but pushing the gore around more rather than erasing it. As with Clare, not even the youth seemed touched by the violence. Devin washed the floor as if it were soiled with any other commonplace muck. Perhaps that was what their own blood was to the humans. Commonplace muck.

When it was Teresa's turn she stepped towards the counter. From under her cloak she produced a small pouch, dropping it onto the marked countertop with a heavy thud. It represented nearly half of her remaining money, Minoc whittling a little more every passing day. Yet the blonde didn't baulk at the price of a human girl's health.

"Ahh. It is Pretty Hands."

An old woman shuffled over to scoop up the pouch, sliding it off the opposite side of the counter and spiriting it away with surprisingly alacrity for one so aged. Like an ancient tree, Ulgi looked to have lived a long time and weathered her share of hardships. Her face resembled a map of the known world, a confusion of thick and thin lines cut into leathery skin. What hair still clung to her scalp was dusty gray and wispy, poking out from under her headscarf like dead scrub. The weight of her years had bent her back, condemning her to a plodding gait back and forth behind her counter.

Her eyes had stayed sharp however, a blue akin to the purest Alphonse ice. They raided the interior of Teresa's hood as they always did whenever the youma slayer visited, hunting for a face. But the shadows were plentiful in the dingy shop and Teresa was not inclined to lower her hood and make it easy for her. News of a 'Claymore' within the walls would run through the closed city in hours. Who could say what fallout would come of that? Minoc was on edge as it was and creeping closer to toppling from it every day.

In spite of her repute as the best healer around and the fee she demanded to exercise that vaunted skill, Ulgi favoured a typical poor peasant's apparel; the muted layered rags that were so popular among the lower class. It did much for her image of a wise mixer of brews however, and maybe that was just the point. It was from one of those tattered layers the old woman pulled a corked wooden bottle, standing it on the counter. Teresa had been expected.

"Every week, the same," Ulgi hacked, her voice the crackling of an antique tome's pages. "The same day. The same hour. The same minute?" She watched keenly as Teresa snatched the bottle. "And the same remedy. 'Winter's Breath' can be fatal... especially to limp-bodied southerners." The old crone grinned, discoloured wooden teeth showing. "...And to the young."

Teresa had turned to leave, but paused despite herself. What did Ulgi know? Teresa had told the apothecary nothing beyond the ailment that troubled her companion, cautious to maintain a low profile in a city on a knife-edge.

Ulgi grinned wider, her teeth creaking.

"Pretty hands," Ulgi repeated, shuffling over to a shelf behind her. "Too pretty for one that holds a weapon like that on your back. Far, *far* too pretty..."

Teresa lowered her cowled head slightly, contemplating whether the store's gloominess had finally failed her.

"Here," Ulgi said, turning back to slide a jar of some mysterious goo across to the unnerved blonde. "For the *child*. Rub it on their chest, twice a day, sunup and sundown. It will help. 'Chill Rot' must have set, for my medicine not to have cured them after all this time."

Teresa eyeballed the jar warily, but it was what it signified that had her cast a suspect look. Human generosity was an invention of storytellers. "The price?" she asked, counting her leftover funds in her head. Whatever it cost, it would be worth every last gold rod if it worked.

Ulgi rhythmically rapped her fingertips on the counter a moment, her knobbed knuckles stiff. "...A name," she settled on.

"My name is-"

"Not yours, monster eater," Ulgi interrupted. "Have your kind's names ever truly meant something? No, the child. Boy or girl?"

Teresa tensed a second. The old woman was indeed sharp. Would her tongue be loose, with 'Claymore' on her lips? In any case, there was nothing to be done about it now. "Girl. Her name is... Clare."

"Clare..." Ulgi parroted slowly, as if she was digesting the name, her blue gaze staring towards a far off place only she could see. "Go now," she then abruptly said, shooing the youma slayer away with waves of her weathered hands. "Twice a day. It will help. Go, go."

"...Thank you," Teresa said, taking the jar and leaving.

"See you next week, Pretty Hands. Bring your girl. She will be able to walk again."

Teresa glanced over her shoulder to see Ulgi grinning.

The blonde woman left The Cure behind for the streets once more, and its beggars and criminals and squalor. The district she walked to next wasn't much better than the last, but at least it seemed safer, with people not being murdered and dumped on the cobblestones to her knowledge. The inn was there; the 'Rabbit's Respite'. Weeks ago its lodgings were the best Teresa's gold could buy; in a couple more weeks a hayloft outside some seedy tavern would claim that title. A little work wouldn't go unwanted right now, but unless the southern armies turned into a horde of youma, there was no demand for Teresa's particular talents. Besides, her kind was apparently no longer welcome in the northern reaches by decree of the human authority governing the rugged expanse.

The Rabbit's Respite sign soon creaked above Teresa's head; the crude drawing of a brown sleeping rabbit had become a signal of home lately. Or as close to home as Teresa could fathom in her mind. Clare was inside the inn, as much of home as Teresa had ever understood or needed. The youma slayer couldn't recall another occasion she had chosen to dwell in one place for so long. A perpetual drifter, it was a strange feeling to discover comfort in stagnation, in routine, in returning to the same four walls day after day-and some days not leaving them at all. Teresa frequently told herself that it certainly would not last, that she should not grow accustomed to these scheduled days, not become dependent on the feeling. The mutterings about the force outside the walls and now the siege towers peeking above them kept her will strong and her heart stony, but she would be lying to herself if she said she never forgot about Minoc's predicament to relish in her novel time here... if only in small amounts here and there.

Teresa entered the inn, trekking across the ground floor tavern towards the stairs. It had been a concern of hers that a tavern below the rooms would be a raucous annoyance; however the Rabbit's patrons were too lost in their drinks for merriment. Teresa supposed there wasn't a great deal to celebrate with death on your doorstep.

The innkeeper, who also posed as the bartender, glanced at Teresa as she past before going back to taking swigs of his finer stock behind the bar. The almost sickly skinny man was used to her comings and goings and no longer paid her much attention. That he had taken to drinking his own supply of ale and mead meant even he must be feeling the hand of death on his shoulder today. Perhaps when Teresa couldn't afford her bill anymore it wouldn't matter. Like booze, what good was gold to a corpse.

Teresa walked upstairs, already eager to see the old scratched-up door to her and Clare's room. If only the circumstances of their sojourn had been better. Clare was sick, a victim of her human body's weakness... and Teresa's pace on the road, the blonde feared. The journey through the border wilds and Alphonse's snowy climate had taken a massive toll on the girl. 'Winter's Breath' other humans had named it. Clare had no strength in her limbs, no appetite in her stomach, and barely any air filled her chest. She spoke of being cold when it was hot, even when her skin burned to touch. Teresa paid extra for a room with a fireplace and kept its flames stoked high at all hours, and yet nothing seemed to drive the ice from Clare's blood. It was now 'Chill Rot', Ulgi had said. So many different names for as many different illnesses, every one as inventive at killing humans as the last. It was a wonder that humans survived a day in a world so determined to see an end to them.

Teresa had questioned putting her faith in someone else to heal Clare, even after seeking much advice from the locals to unearth Ulgi as the most skilled at it in the city. She still questioned. But knowing little about human wellbeing, the blonde had no other option. At least Clare hadn't gotten any worse. But the new medicine had better do as the old woman had said. If Ulgi turned out to be another charlatan...

Teresa took out the room key and unlocked her door, locking it behind her once she was inside. Leaving Clare by herself, especially in her condition, had Teresa forever on edge until she could lay eyes on her companion again. If they were forced to find a new, less secure, place to stay Teresa would have to think of a better way to pick up Clare's remedies; she couldn't very well forsake the girl to the villains of the streets in her absence.

The blonde woman went to the softly crackling fireplace first, tossing a couple more logs into it, and then to the chair by the room's only bed. She unfastened her cloak and slung it over the back of the chair, shaking her wavy flaxen tresses out, and then unbuckled her claymore from her shoulders. Teresa placed it gently against the wall, scabbard and all. Once she had undone her bracers she put them on the small bedside table nearby, brow creasing a little at the mostly uneaten food resting on a tray there as well. A day's fare wasn't complimentary for guests of the Rabbit's Respite, and in spite of where the inn was and the class of visitors it encouraged the meals weren't bought cheaply either. Teresa's frown wasn't for the gold squandered though, but for the ever missing appetite of the unconscious girl in the bed.

Teresa took the jug from the tray and poured some water into a wooden cup. With sublime care she eased a hand behind Clare's head and coaxed it up from the pillow towards the cup.

Clare emitted a quiet murmur as her lips touched the cup and felt the water lap against them, before she instinctively drank, taking huge gulps as if a moment away from succumbing to thirst. When the cup was empty Teresa filled it again, this time adding the usual dose of medicine she had received from Ulgi. It changed the water to a muddy brown concoction that looked vile and at odds with the curative properties it was supposed to contain. Nevertheless, the blonde brought it to Clare's lips-Teresa had nothing else to put her faith in.

The girl's face contorted at the no doubt insulting taste, but she swallowed it down as she had every prior dose. Finally, Clare opened her eyes, revealing an exhausted, bloodshot gaze.

"Teresa..." was the only word her raspy tongue could muster.

Teresa smiled faintly down at her. Clare didn't have to say anything.

With a delicacy many would be surprised a predator of youma commanded, Teresa helped Clare sit up. The bedridden girl was also too weak to question what the blonde was doing; simply staying upright taking everything her frail form had. She didn't protest at her shift being pulled over her head, or at the smelly ointment Teresa liberally smeared all over her chest. And it was indeed very smelly. Clare was as malleable as a doll in the youma slayer's hands. The sort of trait she had known others of her kind to have coveted in their human pets; a plaything without questions or protests, without thoughts or feelings, existing solely for the desires of their strong mistress.

Humans could be many things good and bad and all in between, but they weren't made to be pets. Clare wasn't a pet. Teresa did not want a doll or a plaything, nor did she keep Clare's company for her own sake. Teresa's sisters, the ones that had selfishly enslaved, did not-could not-feel as she felt now. Clare did not exist for Teresa's desires-Teresa lived for Clare's.

Teresa replaced Clare's nightgown and cradled the girl back down onto the bed. Her eyes had closed again, her infirmity frequently robbing her of most of her waking hours. It seemed today would be like yesterday and the day before and the day before that; but in tomorrow Teresa had hope.

Teresa sat down on the chair facing the bed. A statue of a blonde woman watched Clare as her chest lift and fell, listening only to the girl's breathing. Minutes past. Hours. In the window on the other side of the bed, in the corner of one unblinking silver eye, Teresa could see the snow-capped northern mountain peaks rising far, far away. Their goal, within sight. But not within reach. Clare had proven herself not ready for that final, gruelling, journey, where the winds would blow fiercer and frostier than those that had challenged them, and the ranges climbed higher than anywhere else in all the lands. Would Clare, a human, ever be ready? If there was another world to be discovered beyond the mountains, a world without Claymore and the Organisation, would they see it together? Or was Teresa pushing Clare blindly towards a certain death, her malleable doll after all?

Teresa thought of Josel. Find the girl a home, the sister had said. Teresa had believed their home to be one and the same, to be found together. She had believed she could protect Clare from anything and everything. It had all been so clear to her; where she had been, where she was going, what she had been seeking. Teresa had thought she had every answer to every question. She didn't.

But the answers would come soon. As soon as the mountains did.

* * *

Teresa watched Clare as her chest lift and fell, listening only to the girl's breathing. Clare lay in the bed, her eyes closed. Not unconscious-*asleep*. It was early morning, too early for the recovering girl to be awake yet. Ulgi's cures had at last fulfilled their and their brewer's promise. Clare was better. Much better. She could talk; she could walk; she could eat and drink her fill. And Teresa's heart could beat again.

It was a new day in a new week. Teresa needed a replenishment of Ulgi's remedies. For all the colour back in her cheeks and renewed vigour in her limbs, Clare wasn't entirely rid of the chill in her blood and bones. She still needed rest in a warm bed in a warm room and daily doses of the best medicine Minoc could provide. Clare's place was still here. Teresa knew the girl well enough that she would say otherwise, eager to follow in the youma hunter's footsteps, but not this day. Definitely not this day.

Teresa closed the door.

On the landing outside her and Clare's room she allowed herself to hear it. Minoc had begun to crack. Even at this early hour the sound of humanity's death rattle was thunderous, the rooster's crow exchanged for human howls, for breaking glass and ringing steel-for piercing screams. Toulouse and its allies had not come, not yet, though it wouldn't be long before they were scaling the walls. This was Minoc's people beginning to realise it. It had dawned on them, with inescapable finality, that their lives were about to end. No more self-delusion, no more faith in silent Gods, no more hope in miraculous victory or mercy. The people knew now that there was nothing to fear anymore, nothing left to lose. What did a man care for when he had already tumbled from the cliff into the inevitable? They were alive now and that was all they had. They'd relish the last moments in complete freedom from the yolk that had been around their necks every other day of their lives; shedding once ingrained devotion to sovereign, employer, family, morality, law and order, Gods and their Heavens, and good sense. Every buried lust would be fulfilled in these final hours, every freedom, in this last dawn.

Teresa had seen it before. Give a human too long to think about their coming demise and it drove them mad. It was humankind's Awakening.

The youma slayer trudged down the creaking stairs. The innkeeper was still at his post behind the bar, feverishly polishing his pewter mugs as if all Twelve Lords of Alphonse intended to drink at the Rabbit's Respite this afternoon. There were even a few patrons at the tables, most likely other lodgers staying in the upstairs rooms. No one was drinking. They just sat. Some, the ones who weren't alone, the families, those with children, held one another close. Everyone immediately looked when Teresa descended into the tavern. These people had not found freedom yet-only fear.

Like the members of the city's garrison manning the ramparts this very minute in full regalia, there were some that stayed true to their responsibilities. Those individuals too loyal to the idea of honour; or too dedicated to loved ones; or even simply too stuck in routine to abandon it even in the face of annihilation. Those that stayed true to something inside-and to themselves. Teresa couldn't say if the steadfast were to be admired. It was their fear that kept those people in their place most of all. Fear of change, fear of forsaking what they knew to embrace cold death instead. In the end, they were just humans burning out like all the rest of them.

Seeing Teresa had not emerged from her room to butcher them, the people in the tavern went back to feeling sorry for themselves; a thankfully quiet pastime besides the handful of stifled sobs from the weaker women and their offspring. As the blonde past the bar, the innkeeper looked up from his mugs, though his buffing never ceased.

"I'd stay in with your girl today," he spoke up, familiar with Teresa's weekly pilgrimage and the reclusive company she held upstairs.

"I would if I could," Teresa replied, not stopping.

"Then I should tell you I'm going to bar the door soon. I'd rather not serve drinks to the rioters or the invaders this afternoon."

There were no objections from Teresa. Clare would be safer inside a fortified building than not. At least until she could *truly* be safe-under Teresa's watchful eye once more.

"That thing on your back," the innkeeper kept talking behind her, raising his voice to follow her. Harried. Hopeful. "Can you really swing that thing, or...?"

Other people looked to the blonde warrior again too, reacquainting themselves with the fearsome sight of the aforementioned 'thing' strapped to her body, the bare wedge tip almost scraping the floor. They had thought her their killer and now they sought a saviour. Teresa was neither.

She left the Rabbit's Respite and its innkeeper and patrons without another word.

The streets outside the inn were quiet, the morning mist hovering above the cobblestones undisturbed by a soul save Teresa-the lawlessness hadn't spread to the inn's doorstep yet... but it would. However, whether there were armies battering down the gates and hoodlums around every street corner or not, Teresa wasn't one to dawdle. With luck, Clare wouldn't even know she was gone.

The further Teresa walked the more it looked as though Minoc had already been breached by invaders. Doors to homes and shops were left wide open to the wind-some no longer had doors but splinters on hinges. Shutters were torn loose and tossed wherever, the windows underneath smashed into hundreds of scattered shards to have made way for a dozen different looters passing through. Clutter littered the road; broken and abandoned furniture, stolen ornaments cast aside as worthless, unwanted heaps of clothing; all sorts left behind as an echo of the latest ransacking.

For all the devastation it was a sideshow to the city's people. Villains and victims criss-crossed in and out of Teresa's sight; vandals and the offended; thieves and the robbed; thugs and the assaulted. Human blood and human voices were in the air. And human fear. Men and women rushed everywhere, for petty treasures and flimsy safety both, spurred by a common affliction of urgency. There was desperation in the eyes of every person Teresa saw.

Down some thoroughfares primitive barricades slapped together from the debris had sprung up, grim-faced and crudely armed citizens staring out from the other side, table and chair legs and kitchen and smithy tools the predominant weapons of choice. Whether the efforts were to repel the coming Southern Alliance force or to protect property from the rioters was anyone's guess. Probably a bit of both. Desperate to defend their way of life, desperate to defend their lives.

Down another street roving ragtag bands moved as one, a force of nature wrecking anything and beating anyone caught in their pull. Improvised clubs, dug up cobblestones, bare fists-everything was a weapon, any reason was enough to employ them. They no longer thieved but simply destroyed, razing all that held worth and meaning in their city before someone else did, searching for an enemy to fight. Desperate to battle for their way of life, desperate to battle for their lives.

And then there was Teresa. She walked down the middle of the streets, in between the looted buildings, amongst the frantic people. She walked alone, an unswerving ship in a roiling sea. She walked apart from everything. It was as if she wasn't really there, a passing silhouette under the morning sun. The humans, even swallowed by their insanity, gave her a wide berth. They innately knew she was not one of them; not a piece of their collective last gasp; not kindred to their pooled emotion. She was who she was and they were who they were. As it had always been; one world alongside another. Teresa could not save them from themselves. Nor would they have asked if they had known the colour of the eyes that gazed out from underneath her hood.

Teresa walked. She walked past four young men punching and kicking a bloodied old man labouring to keep his arms up over his body, and didn't flinch as the youths picked up chunks of brick to use instead of their fists. She walked past a man and a woman lugging a trunk bursting with silverware through a shop window, and she didn't blink at the gutted bodies in the doorway. She walked past six men with scarfs wrapped around their faces forcing themselves on a lone girl whose clothes were turning to tatters underneath their clawing hands, and she didn't pause when the hooting men finally pinned the girl down to the cobblestones. There were dozens of such sights around Teresa. Dozens upon dozens. There was no point in stopping it. No point in intervening, even if Teresa had been moved by what she witnessed. Self-inflicted atrocities and tragedies were what comprised human culture. There was no one around her worth saving. There was no one that *could* be saved. A life saved today would simply mean a life senselessly lost later. It was in a human being's nature to hurt others. And to die easy.

Teresa turned down another street where citizens were amassing around a bellowing man standing atop a few stacked crates, a wild gesticulation after his every howl and holler. Another militia in the making. With Minoc's garrison at the walls to die before the South's forces, more and more people had taken to policing themselves. A noble idea, but as with all humanity's good intentions, quickly corrupted by human desire. In a perfect world the populace would arm themselves with whatever weapons dug up from dusty corners of every half-baked smith and armoury in the city and rise as one to defend their homes and each another. In truth, for every militia faithful to their wartime doctrine, a dozen more would turn to banditry. Put weapons in the hands of the people and you put them in the hands of the criminals too. It wasn't just human nature-it was the nature of the blade. Give someone power over life and death and they would use it. They would most certainly use it.

The shouting man caught Teresa's passage through the crowd, and probably sensing a real fighter, began to work for her attention. "You! Can you do nothing while your...!" He was stopped by a hand on his shoulder and the shake of a head from a confidante next to him. Then the man saw what his friend saw-no saviour, a figure apart, a shadow passing on the wall. Not a beat later the loud man resumed rousing the crowd, where his words could touch sympathetic ears instead. For her part Teresa hadn't slowed. She had ears for one human's tongue-only one. And she longed to hear that sweet voice again.

Seeing The Cure quickened Teresa's heart together with her stride. The apothecary's store hadn't burnt to the ground just yet. It wasn't until the blonde moved closer and noticed the door was ajar that she realised the unrest hadn't missed Ulgi's doorstep.

Standing on that doorstep, Teresa nudged the door open the rest of the way. It creaked as it always had. The old floorboards did as well when she walked inside. But it was a different store now. It was quiet. It was still. There were no customers; there was only Teresa. She saw Ulgi's assistant, Devin, there to greet her at the counter. On top of it. He was lying on his side, his back to her.

Teresa walked closer, knowing what she'd find. She could smell the scent in the air. The woman touched the boy's arm, rolling him onto his back. He stared up at her. There was nothing in those eyes anymore; the gash across his throat had seen to that. They'd cut him from ear to ear, the final minutes of Devin's waking life spent bleeding out and choking on his own death. It wasn't a peaceful end; however it was at least an end. Those eyes wouldn't witness another atrocity, his body wouldn't feel any more pain, and he would know no further hardship.

It hadn't occurred to Teresa before, but he and Clare were around similar ages.

"Hmrmm... is that you, Pretty Hands? Did you come? Every week... the same..."

Teresa rounded the counter. Ulgi was on the other side, slumped against her shelving, concoctions knocked loose shattered on the floor around her. Teresa could still isolate the human blood within the blended spills.

"You... didn't bring her... 'Clare'..." Ulgi sounded disappointed. The youma slayer would have thought the knife in her breast would have been her larger concern.

"No," Teresa replied, kneeling to the old woman's level.

"Pity. Pity-pity. I would have liked... to see her..." Ulgi gazed ahead, her blue eyes, usually so keen, dull and unfocused. "I had a girl, long ago. A beautiful girl." Her head turned against the shelf, looking up at Devin on the counter. The young boy's blood had run rivulets down the counter to the floor, pooling with Ulgi's and her broken wares, one last stain for the old wood. "This... world... is too cruel for children. I wonder... if it was really meant for us..." The crone's leathery head lolled towards Teresa, her ragged lips curling back from her wooden teeth in what the youma hunter believed was either an attempt at a smile or a grimace of pain, "...or if... it was made for the monsters... and the eaters of monsters..."

Ulgi wheezed, the knife moving with her chest. She tried to lift one of her arms, but the limb trembled after a few inches and dropped dead at her side again.

"I'll... find someone to help you," Teresa said. It sounded awkward, and it was awkward coming out. They both knew it for a tired platitude, a pantomime of human speech by someone who wasn't human, who had only seen what it was to be so.

Ulgi gave that semblance of a grin once more. "Nice of you... I don't have a cure for this!" The mirthful hag glanced at the knife and then shook her head; more a quiver really. "I bargained with death, staved it off for others... for so long... now I go myself... to settle up with the Gods." She again tried to lift her arm, failing. "I suppose... you want what you... came for..." More strain had seeped into her scratchy voice. "I... have it... in..."

Teresa leaned in and reached into the old woman's billowy layered sleeves, where she normally kept Clare's remedies, and felt smooth glass within.

"Yes... you know where... that is it... my last cure," Ulgi remarked with a combination of pride and melancholy as Teresa drew back with the jar of salve. "And yours."

"The price?" Teresa asked quietly.

Ulgi smiled, no mistaking it this time. "*You*. Your face before mine. If I can't take Clare's with me... yours will have to do..."

Teresa stood, putting away the jar inside her cloak. She lowered her hood, allowing her unnaturally flaxen locks to spill out in waves down her back and over her shoulders, and for her otherworldly silver eyes to shine brightly in the dim light.

"As... pretty as your hands..." Ulgi praised, her coarse face a quilt of creases as she beamed up at Teresa. "Don't be something you are not, Pretty Eyes," she muttered and mumbled. "Only you... know what you are. You... Monster... to monsters... Witch to... the ungrateful... The hope... to a... g-girl..."

It took a moment for Teresa to realise the old apothecary wasn't blinking anymore. Nor was she breathing. But Ulgi was still gazing up at her, still smiling.

Teresa turned from the corpses, pulling her hood back low over her inhuman features. Briefly the thought of where she would get medicine for Clare now that Ulgi was dead passed through her mind, however with the city on the brink of falling it wouldn't have been at The Cure again anyway. It was a pragmatic contemplation, yet the woman was glad when it had gone.

The streets hadn't gotten any more peaceful when Teresa made her way back to the Rabbit's Respite. If anything the madness had spread; the crowds thicker, and louder, and their aggression swelled to match. There was no one around the inn when Teresa returned to its door however, a small relief. True to his promise, the innkeeper had barred the entrance for his, Clare's, and everyone's safety. Teresa didn't bother to knock-it was not an inconvenience for a being that could leap several storeys straight up.

Teresa climbed through the window into the inn room she kept with Clare, and at once her ready gaze sought out her other half. But the bedsheets were empty, the mattress cold to touch. The room's door was wide open. A moment of worry passed through the woman.

"You're not bad with that, girl."

It was the innkeeper's voice from downstairs. Teresa followed it to the landing outside the room and to the stairs.

"Keep it high; my Pa used to say a novice should always rely on the high guard. He-"

The innkeeper clammed up when he saw Teresa coolly walk down the stairs, one heavy boot at a time. His face said that he was surprised; either from seeing Teresa appear from upstairs after he'd barred the front entrance or at being caught encouraging Clare. Someone had put a sword in the girl's hands.

"I... I passed out what blades I had," the innkeeper apparently felt compelled to explain under Teresa's ominous presence. "Weapons guests had forgotten or traded for rooms or drink, some I confiscated from duelling drunks... I thought it for the best, considering..."

Teresa glanced around the tavern. Instead of liquor everyone nursed a sword. Some of the humans clutched them like lifelines, some tried to actually wield them, attacking the air with all the grace one would expect from farmers and peasants. Clare was among the latter sort. She at least swung her sword in a manner that the air might just fear her one day.

"How did you get up...?"

The innkeeper knew when to hold his tongue when Teresa marched right past him to tower over Clare.

"You're supposed to be sick."

"I think I'm better," Clare replied, holding the sword upright in both her hands, the point reaching well beyond the top of her auburn head.

"Mmm," Teresa dryly concurred. In a sudden blur of motion she had plucked the blade from Clare, leaving the girl's hands empty and with a gasp in her throat instead. The youma slayer studied the old battered sword at length in front of Clare, her eyes running along its chipped edge. Then she put it aside on the bar. Clare watched it go with obvious disappointment.

Unmoved, Teresa looked at her. "I am the only sword you will ever need."

"It wasn't for me," Clare spoke up softly.

Clare looked away, around the room. Teresa looked as well and saw what Clare had. Every face was turned in their direction. Every eye was watching their exchange. Everyone needed a sword... but not the sword they were holding.

Teresa looked to Clare once more. The girl stared back.

It was then the roof came crashing down in a shower of wood and tile, bringing along with it a giant boulder and the first taste of open war.

* * *

"Are you hurt?" Teresa's voice was alone in the dark, in the sudden quiet. From a distance there were groans, both of stone and of flesh, sounds of a world held at bay for the time being.

Clare was beneath the youma slayer, under her, sheltered by her. Several tons of creaking brick and wood and tile pressed down against Teresa's arched back, insisting on flooding her and Clare's private cocoon. But for a moment, Teresa and Clare's moment, it kept still.

Clare was looking up at Teresa, dirt on her face and dust in her hair. She nodded, and Teresa smiled. The woman took the time to brush some of the dirt out of the girl's locks, a trickle of pebbles accompanying the movement of her arm.

"Are you ready?"

Another nod, and Teresa's face changed. The warmth and emotion drained, the woman becoming the instrument again, the impassive and enigmatic legend. Teresa stood up.

Rubble poured from Teresa's back, and the world came rushing in, the explosions, the screaming, and the dying. Teresa erupted from the debris pocket, standing in what had been the Rabbit's Respite-a respite for no one any more, unless among the guests who were in for a permanent stay. Limbs stuck out from under oak beams and mounds of rock; a grimy hand here and a bloody leg there; never moving, the only markers for a dozen graves.

Clare looked around in mounting horror, her breathing growing faster and faster.

"We have to go," Teresa said quickly, seizing Clare by the arm and dragging her through the inn's ruin.

The pair stumbled into the street, bumping into a hundred other souls with the same thought. Smoke filled the streets and fire crested more than a few buildings, while even higher flaming pitch and stones broke the sky, raining relentlessly upon Minoc. Hundreds of people with the same thought and nowhere to go. The city was a cage, a budding insane asylum, and soon it would be a tomb.

"Stay close! Hold onto me!" Teresa barked back to Clare, pushing a path through the chaos, gripping the girl's arm as if it were her claymore's handle.

Teresa couldn't break the southerner's lines, maybe alone but not with Clare; that she had known for a while. Yet there had to be another way out of the city and past the army. The blonde's racing thoughts instinctively went to the sewers; the locale in a human city she typically frequented most in her former career. Any route outside the walls via the tunnels would be sealed behind a mass of welded bars, especially during the siege-perhaps not sealed to her arm and its steel however. Escaping the army's attention was something else. She could only hope that the sewers would lead to a section of wall not currently beset by invaders. Maybe heading for a lesser gate was the answer? Getting beyond Minoc's walls was the simplest part of the crisis after all; how far she got afterwards with Clare was what plagued her.

"Keep moving!" Teresa called. No matter what they couldn't remain in Minoc. The Southern Alliance appeared intent on levelling the city with little thought to anyone within.

Teresa's feet had brought her to the nearest, smallest, and most underused gate. The city guard swarmed at its foot and on the ramparts; siege towers had already reached the latter, each heaving out a glut of Toulouse, Lautrec, Mucha, and Staff soldiers to harry the defenders. As it looked, Minoc's men still had fight left in them, somehow holding the onslaught to a stalemate.

Teresa and Clare weren't alone in their idea. Citizens swarmed the gate alongside the guard, ready to unbar the giant doors just to flee the rising heat of their homes burning. The fighting was fierce on the walls, but maybe Teresa could just leap over them and avoid the crush at the gate? It sounded so ill-conceived in Teresa's head. It all had right from the beginning. She was like everyone else here. She didn't know what to do. She didn't know how to get Clare out. As a sister, a creature that could shrug off arrows and blades, escape was straightforward. As a human being...

Teresa stopped in the middle of the street, her grip on Clare slackening until it fell loose. She looked pensively at Clare who returned the stare. There was expectation in her green eyes. There was faith. Blind faith. Clare looked to Teresa for everything, trusted her for anything. And Teresa was letting her down. Teresa was pretending to be something she was not; that she could never be. Pretending a sister and a human could truly be together, pretending she knew anything about being human. She thought of Josel, of the Organisation, of all the opposition until now, of the dream of the mountains and peace and home. A dream was a dream for a reason.

Teresa had to try though. For Clare's sake, for a chance for the girl to live, she had to try.

"Keep behind me," Teresa said, with a confidence she did not feel.

Thick shards of wood suddenly burst in every direction, the gate's barred double doors disintegrating into smoke and flinders. The closest guards and citizens milling about at its foot disintegrated with it, vanishing within the blast or reduced to fine red mist, bits of blood and bone mixing with the dust. The trebuchet shot responsible erupted from the grisly scene a millisecond later-a roughly hewed boulder, its unstoppable path making ragdolls out of anyone in its the way.

"Down!' Teresa snapped, turning to Clare and covering her body with hers, forcing her low to the ground.

The boulder lost height and hit the pavings in front of the pair, before skipping just over Teresa's back and careering further down the street. Teresa's head whipped around, tracking its route, and she watched it lodge in a building's facade, caving it in as if it were made of parchment.

Roars followed the boulder, and through the dust cloud hundreds of southern soldiers stormed in, trampling the maimed and the dead and whirling and thrusting blades at anyone still fortunate enough-or unfortunate enough as it were-to still be standing. They poured past the wrecked gate like enraged ants from a kicked ant mound, or a raging endless river from a ruptured dam; screaming obscenities and wordless wrath, driven by a collective insanity only bitter warfare bred. The soldiers set upon everyone, armed guard and unarmed citizen alike, no discrimination or quarter in the heat of battle. Those that didn't slaughter the northerners still by the gate stormed the ramparts, hitting the defenders on the walls from behind and crushing them against the siege tower invaders. The city guard there fought with renewed ferocity-cut off from retreat they had good reason to-but it was a dwindling defiance in the face of overwhelming odds. The men died on that wall, any heroics forgotten in the next moment. Minoc was breached.

Teresa cursed herself for a fool. Of course the southern legion would commit the bulk of their force to the weakest city gate, the one more likely to fall. The monster hunter was no siege tactician or authority on human warfare by any means, yet common sense should have been an adequate tutor.

The northern survivors scattered from the gate, only the citizenry standing in the way of the Alliance's advance. Old men, the enfeebled, the women, the children. Teresa knew what was going to happen next. Like wolves the assaulting soldiers descended on them, any scrap of military discipline they had entered Minoc with evaporating before the sight of a helpless crowd. The males were put to the sword, some slower than others, their deaths turned into a macabre sport. The females died later after the soldiers had used up their bodies in every manner a woman could be used. It was anarchy. It was brutal. It was humanity.

"Clare," Teresa said quickly, coldly surveying the spectacle, "we must-"

Clare wasn't beside her.

"CLARE!"

Clare was running towards the madness, into it, scooping up someone's dropped sword as she charged. Barely keeping the heavy blade straight, she let the tip lead her towards the nearest rape-a young girl-and thrust the sword into the back of a soldier's thigh.

The Toulouse soldier hollered and shot upright from his spoils, turning to the sting wide-eyed and livid. As Clare unsteadily pulled her sword loose and tottered back, the soldier abandoned the small peasant girl to his half a dozen compatriots' tender company, a different girl having entered into his wild gaze.

"Little bitch!" he snarled, drawing a long thin knife from inside his scratched breastplate. "See this? It's about to be your *lover*, you wh-!"

The threat died when his brain did as Teresa's claymore sliced through skull and spine and groin, cleaving the man in half, his insides splattering wetly from between his legs onto the street paving stones. The woman warrior looked through his collapsing corpse, seeing fifty more of the man everywhere; another torturer, another rapist, another murderer. She saw that Clare saw them too. And beneath them, trodden under their heels Clare's eyes saw the victims; another ravaged young girl, another brutalised woman, another battered young man. People suffering. People that needed someone to act. People that needed someone to care. People who were as Clare had been, all those months ago.

Teresa couldn't pretend anymore. Even through silver eyes Teresa saw what Clare saw. The only difference-it was another Clare she saw in every one of the victims.

The soldier's violent death rippled through the invaders, slowly but ever reaching, a stone dropped into a filthy puddle. The other six rapists were first to gape at their comrade's sudden and visceral demise, hands instinctively clutching for their weapons. And then Teresa pulled off her hood. Even their victim stared after that.

"C-Claymore!"

"One of those witches!"

Whether seeking revenge, whether still frenzied and heady from their initial victorious attack and open plunder, or whether they were simply foolhardy, soldiers came at Teresa. They swung at her, they stabbed at her. Three, five, eight, *twenty*-*more*. Teresa swung in return. She stabbed in return. She didn't seek them out, but when the men ran at her with steel she met them in kind. Toulouse, Lautrec, Mucha, and Staff soldiers died in droves, by the handful, by the dozen. Teresa walked forward-Clare behind her holding her own bloodied sword-forcing the invaders back with her sheer presence, and slaying every other bloodthirsty human that chose to raise arms against her instead of falling back. Teresa gave them a chance; she gave them mercy-she let them run. And they did run, eventually. They poured out of the gate and Minoc proper as they had rushed in, but this time over the bodies of a hundred of their fellows.

Minoc's people, shocked and stunned like every human in the vicinity, still had the wits about them to take the opportunity to flee themselves; vanishing down streets and into wrecked buildings like mice into cracks, taking their lives with them.

"Crossbows, LOOSE!"

"Behind!" Teresa yelled, driving the point of her claymore into the street with one arm while ushering Clare firmly to her rear with the other. She placed herself behind the wide flat of the blade as a black swarm of bolts peppered her. The crossbow bolts pinged off the steel; others found their mark, piercing the blonde's leather armour in her shoulders and arms and legs. They dug deep, through flesh and muscle, but not a human's flesh and muscle. Needles in a legend's hide.

Teresa spent a moment checking on Clare, the unharmed girl breathlessly giving a nod that she was alright. Then Teresa stepped around her claymore and tore it free, cobblestones breaking and flying.

Southern crossbowmen had lined up in two ranks in the gate, the first rank on bended knee below the second, their crossbows levelled at Teresa. The youma slayer moved forward.

"R-Reload! Reload, you dogs!"

Bolts were hurriedly replaced in the weapons and bowstrings and cranks were struggled with, however in the face of a sister there was no time for such a slow armament. As Teresa neared, some of the less disciplined dropped their crossbows and broke ranks, running for their lives. Those that remained, resorting to shortswords, surrendered their lives. A single mighty sweep of Teresa's claymore was enough, a titanic blow for any youma; it was more than devastating against humans.

Teresa marched outside Minoc as fresh infantry were ordered in; the meeting proving again that the South's finest were no match for a sister. The blonde woman stood in front of the gate, in its centre, cutting an arc before her against any that dared try to renew Minoc's sacking, killing when she had to. Ringmail, chainmail, full plate-the soldier's armour, their training, their rank; none of it mattered. Veterans, knights-all were bested and broken, the lucky ones crawling away with stumps for limbs and with breath still in their lungs.

Teresa wielded her claymore as she never had before. She fought not because it was expected, a job thrust upon her; she fought not for her own survival or her own sake. Teresa fought because she felt she had to. She fought because she wanted to. Because it was necessary. Because it was what was needed now, because it was the right thing to do. She fought because it was what Clare would do, had the girl the strength herself. Over the weeks and months Teresa had seen the world through Clare's eyes while it had changed in her own, and she couldn't just watch any longer. She couldn't remain a mere witness to humanity. What her encounters with Clare had kindled; giving up everything to save the girl, committing her life to understanding her, dedicating her heart to loving her; now flared more brightly than ever within her. Teresa didn't claim to have a duty to humanity, but she had a duty to be true to herself. This was who she was. This was the role she wished for. Perhaps... it was who she was meant to be, before the Organisation had gotten its hands on her. A woman who felt something. A woman with compassion.

As Teresa's crusade continued, the demon inside her bellowed its bloodlust, scratching to get out, to immerse itself in the presence of so much carnage. It wanted her to roar as it would, to screech battlecry after battlecry, to revel in the slaughter. But Teresa took no pleasure in the killing. She acted as she must, for the people at her back-for Clare, and for every man, woman, and child in the city behind the girl. Teresa pushed the demon down, its might and its silver eyes all that manifested in her. It was not its fight. This was a fight for the woman in Teresa, a fight for the child she used to be... for the side of her that was still a human being.

Teresa calmly watched through the routing soldiers as trebuchet, ballista, and every other warmachine that could hurl so much as a pebble were amassed against her in the distance. Bowmen joined the machines, nocking arrows. Everything and everyone fired at will, without rhyme or reason, the legion's commanders desperate to end Teresa in an all out bombardment.

Aware that Clare was vulnerable behind her, Teresa leapt into the sky to intercept the barrage, easily outdistancing Minoc's highest walls and the South's tallest siege towers. Arrows were cut to pieces or swept out of the air; trebuchet boulder's were smashed into powder or knocked off course and used as stepping stones to leap higher; ballista bolts had their points sliced off or were driven straight into the earth as Teresa jumped from one to the other. When Teresa landed on the ground again it rained gravel and matchsticks.

With a second grand leap Teresa launched herself towards an empty siege tower near the gate and swung her claymore at its base, demolishing its great wheels on one side, before springing away. The wooden monstrosity groaned, and then toppled. It fell across the breached gateway with an earthshaking crash, effectively blocking it. Teresa appeared on top of her barricade with Clare, and thrust her claymore into it in front of her, her hand resting on the hilt. There were other gates. And plenty more southern troops to storm them. Teresa couldn't be everywhere at once. But she was here at this one now and she hoped that was a statement in itself. As long as Teresa fought here today the Alliance would fail.

Four long, keening horn blows sounded. From her vantage Teresa observed the southern legions break off their assault on Minoc, withdrawing to their fortified lines. The blonde woman allowed herself a faint smile. She looked down at Clare and noticed the girl had stabbed her own sword into the tower in the same fashion she had. Clare was smiling too. Clare was smiling like Teresa had never seen her smile before.

* * *

Teresa eased the last crossbow bolt out of her bicep as the Alliance's commanders cautiously approached on horseback, a rainbow of banners from every authority in the south riding with them, but a white banner holding pride of place. It had taken them some while to muster after the signal to retreat, the time spent no doubt locked in conference amongst themselves debating how to deal with her and not actually have to 'deal' with her. Apparently it was finally accepted that strategy was hopeless if the southern leaders risked braving Teresa's presence now.

The group of men, the majority decked out in shiny plate mail and ornate plumed helmets that had never seen anything more dangerous than a bottle of polish, pulled reins near the fallen siege tower. The mounts were skittish, stepping from one hoof to the other, likely channelling the moods of their wary masters. If the sight of Teresa looming above them, the youma slayer mussed and bloodstained from fighting, wasn't enough to spook, the remains of their unfortunate soldiers surrounding the commanders and colouring the snow more red than white was.

For the men's sake Teresa released the hand she had placed on her impaled claymore, dropping the cut and pierced limb to her side. Her unique symbol etched into the steel had been exposed, the ragged scarf she had kept around it to conceal her identity loosened and lost long ago in the melee. The blood on the blade had run into the markings, filling them, accentuating their ruby shade. Teresa had purposely not wiped her sword.

Next to the blonde Clare mimicked her motions, releasing her own sword from underneath small hands. She eyed the commanders and their entourage like vipers at her feet. Best get on with it before the plucky girl took it upon herself to leap down and attack.

"A Claymore..." one of the commanders spoke in an odd mix of awe and revulsion, "I wouldn't have believed it..."

"Has it turned? Has it Awakened?" another asked snappishly, just below panic.

"No," Teresa replied before anyone else could. That seemed to relieve the group for a moment, before their minds considered the answer and were gripped by fear once more.

"Well if not insane and fallen to darkness yet, I dare say you are on that path to ruin now," a rheumy-eyed and white haired commander remarked, rubbing at his short beard.

"She is *clearly* insane," a younger officer disagreed, his horse constantly skipping and turning underneath him, more so than the other mounts. He wrestled with the reins. "You! Witch! Your Organisation masters will hear of this... this betrayal! This *murder*!"

"You will be hunted like a rabid dog!"

"And put down like one."

"Didn't you hear? The northerners don't even want your kind in their lands!"

Teresa let them ramble on amongst themselves. She looked at her arm, watching her wounds knit, the demon inside her licking them closed.

"A Claymore fights for Alphonse now, for Minoc?"

"No," Teresa answered that particular statement, looking up and silencing the rest of the accusatory gibbering. "Minoc surrenders."

That drew confused exchanged glances.

"I don't defend the city, but the people within it."

The silence lingered until someone scoffed.

"This is not your role, Claymore. This is not the duty you were made for."

Teresa smiled faintly and turned to peer over her shoulder. On Minoc's ravaged ramparts men, women, and children watched her, bedraggled faces scared-hopeful. "Maybe it should have been."

"We came to parley with this creature? Ludicrous!"

"The city is yours if you want it," Teresa spoke firmly over the outburst, "but not its citizens. Guarantee them a safe and unmolested exodus and you can have your victory here."

"It thinks to dictate terms?!"

As the contingent began to devolve into squabbling yet again a voice rose. "Generals... Generals! Generals, if I may?"

An officer pushed his horse to the fore of the pack. His short dark hair was unkempt and a leather eyepatch covered his left eye. He wore the tabard and colours of Karesia, a Toulouse city Teresa and Clare had passed through months ago. His dented and scuffed armour had seen significant wear. "I know this wo- Claymore. She has fought for me-for us-in the past."

There was silence again.

"Captain Sabatte, would you illuminate us?" the old white haired general prompted.

Sabatte inclined his head in deference. "It was in Kazaar after the reclamation. Mercenary work." He at last lifted his head and met Teresa's gaze. "I recall she turned down the offer to work for Toulouse further."

"To aid our enemies it seems!"

"Perhaps, my Lord. Perhaps," Sabatte said quickly, before the delegation could break down again. "This one is a strange Claymore indeed. Like no other. A renegade, no question. But I believe there is honour in her. I believe in her word. If terms are agreed upon, we can trust her to uphold them."

"The people..." the old general muttered. "What is a city without its people?"

"Silver-eyed witch... Do you believe we will let you pass, after all the good men you killed here today? Brothers-in-arms, murdered unjustly by a freak of nature!" another officer called out.

"We can lose more, if that is what you prefer," Sabatte retorted somewhat sarcastically. "Let's not make war and death exist where it doesn't have to."

"I agree," the old general said, capturing the attention of everyone. He looked up to address Teresa. "Safe passage from Minoc for its citizens... for one day. But you... *you* surrender yourself to us."

"For judgement!"

"For execution!"

"No!" Clare screamed, grabbing her sword from the siege tower and almost overbalancing herself with its sudden weight in her slim hands. She stepped closer to Teresa, making to defend her.

Some of the southern commanders' bodyguards drew blades at the sight of the armed young girl, earning a sardonic raised eyebrow from Sabatte.

"I would," Teresa said, her smile still on her face. She looked at Clare, the girl's anxious pants clouding the cold winter air while she held her sword aloft. "I would. But my life is not my own to give."

* * *

Teresa trudged down the beaten road, cleared to the hard frozen earth by the army of footsteps that had come before her. It had begun to snow, flakes falling on the long winding procession that was the population of Minoc. The city marched together for the last time, destined to travel their separate ways eventually to make new homes in other towns and hamlets. The line of faces was dirty and downtrodden, broken, with many nursing hastily treated wounds. Some wouldn't survive their journey. But most would. They had lost everything; homes, businesses, loved ones; their place in the world. But they could still feel the chill air in their lungs and the distant sun on their skin. They were alive. Shoulder to shoulder they walked; peasant, soldier, noble; it no longer mattered who you were, just that you had survived.

A man carrying a bulging ratty burlap sack on his back in front of Teresa turned to look at her. He quickly turned back, his eyes shying away from hers.

It still mattered to them that Teresa wasn't one of them. There was still apprehension in every look, just as much as if it were the southern troops she chaperoned. She wasn't human. She had committed slaughter on a scale no single man or woman could even imagine accomplishing in their wildest dreams... or nightmares. Teresa would never be one of them.

The Alliance generals had given in to the youma slayer, agreeing to her proposal. In the end, they saw Teresa's life wasn't worth the cost to their campaign. And no one really wished to witness any further death on either side, the blood toll overflowing for today.

Evacuating a major city in a day was no small feat, however when your life depended on it people tended to vacillate less. Teresa followed Minoc's citizens, not trusting on the southern armies' mercy lasting for long while outside the battered walls of the city. The blonde's experience with humanity's failings wouldn't let her put it past the southern commanders to not run down their routed enemy on the road a day or week later. But if they tried Teresa would be there, and be ready.

Word would spread of this, of everything that had happened here at the border in the north. The rest of the people in the north, the people of Alphonse, would hear of the siege and near razing of Minoc; the men and women of the south, in Toulouse, would catch word of the butcher with the silver eyes; the natives of the south, of Mucha, would heed the rumour of the blonde negotiator and her young companion that had bargained for thousands of lives; the settlers in the west, in Lautrec, would learn the tale of the solitary warrior that had defied a legion-and the Organisation in the eastern realm of Staff would know that Teresa of the Faint Smile still lived, still rebelled, still with the human girl at her side. Teresa didn't care about the bard songs this event would inspire or the epics it would help pen, or if people would even remember her name. She cared that the world had become smaller, centred on her and Clare. They might be seeing Josel and her group again soon. Perhaps others. Perhaps a lot more.

Clare strode beside Teresa, fit as ever, chest puffed out and eyes bright. She had the sword she had picked up strapped somehow to her back, akin to how Teresa bore her claymore. Teresa supposed it was truly Clare's sword now. The woman hadn't quite gathered all her thoughts and feelings on it just yet, but separating Clare from the blade now seemed wrong. The girl had earned the right to carry it today. Tomorrow was another matter.

The freezing air felt good in Teresa's flaxen locks. She had left her hood down. She was what she was, and she invited every kind of look Minoc's people cared to shoot in her direction. None of them had talked to her. None of them had thanked her. But what of it? Teresa hadn't expected them to. She was no one's idea of a saviour. She was no one's hero.

Except in the mind of one human girl.

And as long as Teresa was Clare's hero, as long as Clare was proud of her, the woman could face the nervous glances and baleful stares with her faint smile. Teresa didn't need or seek the love of the people she protected. She just needed it from the girl who kept her heart.

* * *

The End... for now.

Author's ramblings:

Channelling Kingdom of Heaven at the end there! I originally wanted to have Teresa fight with very little actual killing of soldiers, but I felt that was too unrealistic and idealistic.

Bonus points for anyone that can tell where I ripped off the name of the city from! ^_^


End file.
